


A Kind of Magic

by Entomancy



Series: Divergence [4]
Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Gen, Gore, brief mentions of suicide (no character)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-07
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2017-12-31 19:24:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1035457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Entomancy/pseuds/Entomancy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magic died; but what did this mean for those who used it? Rythian will have to find out quickly, because as bad as he might think things are - they are about to get worse.</p><p>(A little more detail on this setting is here: http://entomancy.tumblr.com/post/59142673415/wips-worldbuilding-the-wildlands, and in the Divergence series description.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. To begin again

Magic died, and there was no warning.

Even now, he remembered the _feel_ of it; that moment when something which had been so close, so thoroughly entwined around every thread of him, had been sheared utterly away. No herald, no hint, not even a scream – and then there _he_ had been, sundered beyond anything that mere flesh could achieve; split open down to the basest splinters of his being as _magic_ tore apart, leaving nothing but half-hallucinatory echoes in its vanishing wake. And Rythian himself, crumpled and gasping against the cool bricks of his already-shuddering shared tower.

Exactly what happened after that was less clear. The tower had collapsed, surrendering to the now-uncompromising forces of geometry and raw gravity, and he had dim recollections of dragging himself step by shaking step, along corridors already bucking and heaving against their own architectural absurdity. Of hands on his own, arms across his shoulders – other dazed figures, some weeping, some crying out, some terrible in their broken silence – and of the final rush of hot dust and awful cracking as the teetering structure had come down just behind them. So close. Too close, in many cases.

Magic died, and so many of them died with it.

Even those that got out – that hauled themselves free of breaking stone, dodging shattered crystal and now-unfettered flame, or managed to angle an abrupt descent into a more forgiving impact – were little more than ghosted shells at first. Drifting, lost in the unfamiliarity of themselves, as much as he was. They wandered, each suddenly a stranger in a world so changed and all the worse for how familiar it otherwise was. _His_ undirected footsteps took him to the shoreline, and he stayed there, staring out across the ever-changing emerald of the ocean, shifting from ink to slate to a turquoise so brilliant that it hurt to look at.

Even now, he wasn’t sure how long he had remained there, while his flayed mind had slowly drawn itself back together, weaving shaky threads of reformed thought across the yawning voids where something should have been – but even the memory of those memories had become so uncertain. It was all clearly impossible, now, but his idling brain wove careful stories of metaphor and imagination into those raw-torn gaps, until he could pretend, just enough, that he had really known it all.

He had, finally, come back into himself; half-starved, bloody from the trailing roads and close escapes that he had barely even noticed – but he had been a wildling even before the magery in his blood awoke and that, at least, remained.

Later, Rythian realised he had been one of the lucky ones. Many never did return, and he didn’t like to wonder how much of that was the price of the Wilds, where inattention could be so swiftly deadly; or more deliberate choice. Worse still were those who had never left at all, physically, but whose eyes remained empty; still lost, deep within the hollow echoes of a life so vanished that it might never have been.

Magic died, and the world changed.

The Wilds were less… _wild_ , now. Monsters still roamed, night still fell with that self-same shocking suddenness, but something underlying about it all had shifted. Rythian had ventured out again eventually, tracing half-mapped routes and rumour, seeking out the places where the old magic had burned so brightly – but that was gone too. Ancient trees, once the great guardians of secret doorways and deep wisdoms, now nothing more than relics of forests long-dead, already bowing to the new weight of time, or the vigorous attentions of insects and creeping fungi.

He found groves turned to sludge; great old temples and twisting ruins sunken into themselves, all shattered stone and encroaching vines that twisted with a slow floral patience through roof beams and across the lifeless limbs of construct guardians, the empty shells of elementals now crumbling into the hungry earth. Empty portal frames, like blinded eyes, staring sightless across a world now lost to them – but open, so suddenly it seemed now, to others.

There had always been travellers – visitors and adventurers alike from across the waves, seeking glory, wisdom or escape in these unbroken lands – but they became more frequent. And different. It was on one of his visits back to a town – a thick-walled ring of houses and localised mine shafts that sank into the earth below, like so many of them were –that Rythian really noticed the change. More new faces, more new accents on the breeze, but the most common thing about them was the now-familiar haunted look in each pair of eyes.

Mage-kind – or at least, those that used to be. Almost all of them, at first. He had thought he understood; after all, his own painfully-hopeful wanderings had stretched well into years now, and he mostly stayed away from the new enclaves, wanting to avoid opening the wounds of memories yet unhealed. It was only later that he realised he wasn’t meeting the same influx of weary pilgrims on his own roads - yet the towns grew ever more, spilling over their own walls, spreading little knots of settlement further out into the open lands.

They kept coming. More arrivals, every time; more slow-filtering rumours that at first he couldn’t avoid, and then he began to seek out, pushed on by mounting horror of what he _had_ heard.

Magic died, and it seemed that out across the sea, there was a new darkness in its wake. He heard the stories then, listened to tales of the bloody turnabout, as the city-states had twisted the fragments of their broken war back and down, onto those who had once wielded a power now blamed for its own destruction. So many had fled, out across the roiling waves to seek shelter in these lands, but the poison followed them. He saw the changes in the crowds; the hardening glances, the half-hidden whispers as rumour began to take hold, began to grow barbs. Began to bite.

The first assault hadn’t come as entirely a surprise. There had been three of them – young goons, emblazoned with logos of one of the companies that had sent more and more recent manpower out into the opening wildlands. They had jumped him in a narrow street, each liquored up and drunker still on self-important bravado, as they spat insults and brandished their weapons. But Rythian had had some skill with defence even before, and his wanderings had at least honed his nerves, if not his techniques. Nothing lethal on either side, although he had taken a few deeper strikes than he might have preferred for himself – but it felt like punctuation.

Magic had died, and the void of it was spilling venom of accusation and aftermath out across the world from some rotted heart. New ports rose, new docks – branded with foreign industry and unfamiliar names – that spat out greedy machinery to rip deep the tamed earth, brazen under the wildlanders’ own baleful attentions. Rythian could feel the pressure, the tension curling tight around fragmenting loyalties as back-alley tussles became whole-street brawls, and whispers gave way to rising denouncements. It was a blackened storm, building everywhere at once, teetering to come crashing down about them all.

Like a falling tower. He had stared down at his own wounds then, as he carefully cleaned the sharp lines left by a lucky strike that had opened his arm, and felt the acid that burned in his throat mirrored up against his thoughts.

Whatever he might once have been, he was a mage no longer. That had ended, in that one moment of soul-rending horror as the world had sundered and taken so much of him with it. But he was still here, and he was _damned_ if he was just going to sit there and watch, while whatever of this life that remained tore itself further apart. His gaze fixed on his own remaining blade – a simple katar, found months ago in one of the crumbling ruins – and his lips thinned as he squeezed the wound edges together firmly.

This couldn’t happen again. Drunken idiots in an alley could no longer be a close-run thing. When the thickening storm finally broke, he needed to be ready - and if being a _mage_ wasn’t going to work anymore, he had to become something else.

_I am Rythian._

It was time to find out what that meant _now_.

-


	2. Wildfires

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was a strange kind of war, but that wasn't unexpected.

The day you became predictable was the day you died.

Perhaps they had been thought as such, by the masters of the industrial juggernauts that had surged out across the waves, jostling viciously with each other as much as anything else, seeking to snatch up wealth and resource from beneath these shores. Perhaps distant committees had assumed that the loose aggregations of adventurers, misfits, chaotic visionaries and the unashamedly mad who occupied these lands would be easily cowed, under the regiment iron hand of corporate military prowess.

With magic returned to fading stories, and so many still reeling in the wake of its loss, perhaps they thought the Wild to be tamed.

They were wrong.

Rythian hadn’t actually been there when the rising tension broke. It was a long time coming but took only a few days to unleash, as the greedy tramp of imported bootfall got too much; too many liberties taken, too many escalating clashes between the increasingly-divided factions. _Something_ had finally snapped.

The first he had known about it, far away in the mountains with new-honed blades still raw in his hands, was the first midday sunset, as an explosion that shook the bedrock thundered out across the landscape. He had emerged, shocked – if not truly surprised – to the sight of a massive plume of lightning-struck smoke, blotting out the sun, hanging above the evil crimson-edged eye of a crater where one of the larger facilities had been. There was retaliation, of course, but the dam had broken, and the industrial incursions quickly found themselves up against the collective, erratic genius of the risen Wild.

It was a strange war. Early victories were theirs, ripping installations apart in half-planned assaults, relatively easy against the underestimated security in place. It got more difficult after that, once the industrial engines switched their focus, churning out wave after wave of carefully-optimised forces, to be met with a maniac defiance which at least succeeded in pushing the battlelines back to the shore. Then re-enforcements arrived, summoned by frantic warnings sent back above the waves. Landlocked defences rose again, flipped around, and where once the thickened walls and watchful towers of defensive architecture had looked inland, now they faced the sea.

The war stalled there. Sieged in bloody equilibrium, beachheads dug in and fell back like a new kind of tide. Each side was looking for something that would tip the balance, as the vicious caduceus of escalating technological chaos wounded tighter and tighter against itself – and with every new assault, every shift in the dreadful play of battle-lines, the same echoed question hung against the air.

Was this it? The time when their mad luck would finally run out, tested again and again against the seemingly-endless assaults from that distant shore. Everything ended, eventually. Was this it?

_Not if I can help it._

Rythian risked a glance out – pulling himself further up from behind the half-shattered parapet of black stone and tangled metal which ran along the top of the walls here – and peered out across the roiling waves. Night had fallen some time ago, but there were so many fires burning on the shore below or breaking after-image streaks across the sky, that a constant flickering twilight bathed the scene. The hulking shape of the latest assaulting battlecruiser lurked out in the deep water, lit up by its own garish lights, which spilled reflections into the ink-thick waters and highlighted the pack of smaller shapes that held guard around it.

Quite a few of them were burning, but there was little time for  satisfaction there. Rythian’s gaze strayed back to the huge, smoking gouge that had been punched clean through the thickest part of their own wall, the torn space ribbed in molten stone, where eviscerated buildings were still collapsing in its aftermath. It was difficult to see exactly _what_ the strange shape that took up most of the big ship’s deck actually was – but exactitudes hardly mattered, when the effect was so obvious.

It did, at least, seem to need a bit of time to fire again. He tried not to look too closely at the trail of destruction. At least, if nothing else, few people actually attempted to _live_ in these constantly-rebuilt towns now, which had become something more akin to vaguely-civic coastal armour than actual settlements. But there was no way that was going to have been clean, and his teeth clenched at even the edge of that thought.

_Bastards._

A more inventive set of curses broke the smokey air, somewhere to his right, and Rythian looked round. He had come up here for the vantage point, after the initial beach assault of this time had broken – likely more of a distraction than anything else – and others had the same idea, clustered behind the sturdiest bits of intact wall. The usual airborne chaos wheeled above them, ship-born drones and vicious metal scouts clashing with an exotic variety on the general theme of ‘piloting’.

The closest figure was familiar enough. Rythian had found himself next to him or one of his companions a dozen times now, each sharing his own half-intentional gift for being in the wrong place at exactly the right time. Ross – if he remembered the name correctly – was the least visibly unusual of the usual group, by Wild standards. Dark haired and thickly bearded, he was clad in much-repaired pinstripe beneath a seemingly-random selection of armour, and was invariably weighed down with the tools of emergency wall repair. He acknowledged Rythian with a grim nod as he ducked back behind a parapet and cursed again.

“We’re royally fucked if that thing stays up,” he said, shaking his head. Rythian didn’t have time to reply, as there was a sudden _whoosh_ of venting air from a bit further on and the smoke swirled up anew, lit for a moment with fresh light as a small rocket surged away. A few heartbeats later and there was a distant, slightly damp explosion, and the second figure dropped back into shelter again, silently wedging the emptied launcher between his besuited knees as he started to reload. Ross reached up, pressing a hand to the earpiece half-hidden under the tight coils of his hair, and listened for a second before glancing back at his friend.

“Shot wide, Smiff; bit more to the left.” He arched round, peering back over the wall, and his lips thinned as he pressed the earpiece again. “Trott, mate, you see any way in?”

A deeper frown etched onto his features as he listened to the presumable reply. Rythian inched closer, staying beneath the protecting stone, as something detonated nearby with a sound like shearing tin. His own eye-in-the-sky wasn’t going to be close enough to see specifics – she was usually too involved with keeping drones off the less well-armoured aeronauts – so this was something he could use.

“Anything?”

“Nah.” Ross shook his head. “I mean, it’s not like a walrus in a jetpack’s the most stealthy of scouts, but they’re force-fielded up to the friggin’ eyeballs out there.”

A spark of idea lit up at the back of Rythian’s mind.

“Solid or overlapping?”

Ross blinked again, but tapped his earpiece anyway and repeated the question. Then he glared into nothing.

“ – what did you think I -? Over _lapping_ , you fish-breathed git, how would that even -? Yes? Yes.” He looked back at Rythian and nodded. “Overlapping. Not by much though, and even without an flippered arse that size, you’d be pushed. _Yes_ I know you can still hear me – “

Rythian stopped paying attention to the rising – occasionally tuneful – bickering, and glared out across the fire-lit bay again. One hand dropped to press gently against the small, very carefully-packed pouch that hung at his waist. Having forcefields that overlapped suggested strongly that whatever that thing was, it couldn’t fire _through_ one. So there should be gaps. They’d be narrow, but…

His aim was _very_ good, now.

“I’ve got an idea,” he said, catching Ross’ attention again, and the other man raised an eyebrow.

“That so?” His gaze flicked quickly across Rythian – assessing – from the twinned blades at his sides to the folds of dark material that wrapped around his face and shoulders, hiding most of his features except his eyes; dark even against the visible strip of tan skin. “Need a hand?”

“I need explosives,” he replied, as another rocket went off beside them, followed this time by a much more _definite_ sound of eruptive impact. Ross’ expression went carefully blank, considering, then a wicked grin caught onto his face and he craned back round towards his more unconventional friend.

“Yeah, see now _that?_ That we can do. Smiff? You been sitting on anything good over there?”

The other figure looked up. He didn’t smile – there was no space on the smoothed-over expanse of his face _for_ a smile – but his outsize eyes crinkled at their edges, and he put aside the smoking launcher to reach into his pack. Rythian watched him search, a little warily. He’d seen the green-skinned man work before, and what he might lack in subtlety he generally made up for in raw destructive force.

It was certainly his most obvious skill, but the _other_ little hints hadn’t been lost to Rythian’s attention either. The way he looked at things, sometimes; the familiar, old-muscle movements when a part or weapon that had a wand-like shape fitted into his grasp, and just for a _second_ –

He understood that, well enough. Perhaps it went some way to explaining the fervour of the verdant figure’s explosive expertise – refocused zeal was a common enough ex-magekind trait, and Rythian would hardly claim otherwise for himself. Or perhaps not, given the flair for talented chaos that was shared equally by his companions. It didn’t much matter.

There was a clink, and Smiffy pulled a small shape out of the sack, flourishing it with a little more dramatic triumph than might be truly necessary. He leaned over, passing it to Ross, and Rythian got the impression that the shared second of locked gaze contained more information than he was able to pick up on. Then the green man went back to his position, and began strapping the emptied launcher back across his shoulders.

“Think of it like a grenade,” Ross said, brightly, as he handed the shape over – a layered metallic thing the size of a large shoe, with a row of small lights down one side and a button that peered out like a baleful red eye from behind its thin plastic cover. “Only, y’know, much worse. You’ve got about five minutes to get the fuck out of there once you’ve hit the button.”

“ _About?_ ”

“It ain’t an exact science, mate. Just run like the blazes, alright?”

Rythian took the vaguely-sinister shape, warily; but he _had_ asked. It went into his own small backpack, and he tried to ignore the feel of it nestled quite so close to his spine. He nodded, drawing breath as he tried to find a better gratitude phrasing than ‘thanks for the likely-ridiculous bomb’, but Ross had already turned aside, hand at his ear again.

“Slow down, I can’t – ” he stopped and swore again, a different kind of worry in his voice now. He nodded at Smiffy – who had almost finished exchanging active weaponry from rockets to an alarmingly makeshift-looking flamethrower – and stood up, hunching a little behind the parapet. “We’ll meet you there, Trott, just stay put. Head down.”

He hesitated before stooping back down to catch Rythian’s arm, while Smiffy continued to haul himself and his ignition paraphernalia fully upright.

“Whatever mad shit you’re going for – good luck, mate,” he said, quietly. Rythian gave a tight nod in reply – then the other man was gone, lost quickly in the smoke-stained air. Smiffy hefted his macgyvered weapon and hurried after his friend, throwing Rythian a faintly-sarcastic salute as he passed, accompanied by a weird expression that on _him_ was probably the equivalent of a maniacal grin.

Rythian watched their strobe-stuttered shadows vanish into the battlefield glare, and tried to ignore the unease that tightened in his stomach, now more so than ever. It was the same one he felt each time he watched familiar faces heading out into part of this nightmare.

_What’re you going to do about it, Rythian? You can’t save everyone._

Images danced across his thoughts. Fallen stone, burning and crumpled shapes beneath once-shielding walls – and the long, empty stares of minds broken beyond hope. His jaw tightened and he pulled the shrouding layers of his mask more firmly into place, for what comfort that offered.

_No. But I can try._

Rythian fiddled with his own communicator, adjusting it beneath the fabric.

“Lo, can you hear me?” There was that tight moment again, as his ears strained into the faint static-sound of opened channel and dreadful uncertainty curled down around him – but then the connection clicked, and Lomadia’s sharp tones broke in.

“I got you. Any bright ideas?”

“I need a pick up. Top tower, seawards; got a package to deliver.” Rythian stood up as he spoke, and began to make his slightly-hunched way along the walls. The path sloped upwards here, funnelling into the squared-off shape of the tallest watchtower, its glassless windows staring out over the battlefield with grim severity. He slid through the narrow doorway, passing several figures aiming through the windows – exchanging a few brief nods with the more familiar ones – and quickly made his way up through the internal web of ladders, and onto the roof. It was empty up here – unsheltered, barely finished as more than a flattened seal against the elements – and Rythian did one final check as he moved into the centre of the open space.

_Here goes._

No more time for nerves, for thinking about what might go wrong.  The roof was hard beneath his feet as he lunged forward in a sudden sprint, planting the ball of one final tread firmly against the raised lip of the building. The world fell away around him as he leapt out, weightless, for a moment, and Rythian didn’t even try to stop the curl of his fingers against long-gone shadows. He allowed, just for now, the faint flutter to his heartbeat at the initial glide, as momentum carried him forward and it was like dream and memory and those strange moments in between...

Then his stomach lurched, reality clamping down hard as the arc turned into descent, and the flickering battlefield seemed to surge up towards him, glittering with a sudden, grasping hunger – and a new shadow passed across the smoke-stained stars. Rythian barely had time for the usual tinged relief, before clawed digits larger than his own hands closed around his side-stretched arms and new momentum caught around him. There was a screech overhead, more triumphant than threatening, and Rythian tilted his back, staring up at the expanse of feathered underbelly. There were faint glimmers in the down, glints of comparatively-small buckles just visible where the harness was carefully attached across the creature’s body.

Huge wingbeats slammed either side of him a few times, righting their speed, then the outsized owl snapped its pinions open, the wind singing through its long grey feathers as it dropped into an otherwise-silent glide. Rythian’s earpiece crackled.

“One day that isn’t going to work, and you’re ending up as a ninja pancake – you know that?” Lomadia’s permanently-exasperated tones filtered down, but there was the faint hint of amusement in her voice, and Rythian’s own lips twitched beneath his mask.

“I trust you.”

“Hah. Right. Put it all on _me_.” There was a shuffle, movement in the general fluff above, and the owl hooted quietly as it adjusted for the figure that slid down its sides with vertigo-defying ease. Lomadia swung herself into a better position, upside-down with her ankles locked around one of the supporting ropes, and pulled her goggles up onto her chin. She looked worried, even more so than the baseline. The wind was already making Rythian’s eyes stream but he met her blue-steel stare.

“Nothing’s hitting it,” she said, grimly. “There’s been a hell of a lot of shit going off, and it’s not making a dent. I don’t – ”

She didn’t get to finish as – with a whine that set Rythian’s teeth on edge, vibrating in their sockets until pain shivered up and down his face – there was a flicker in the shielding shell around the battleship, and another beam of boiling yellow light burst free. The owl shrieked above them, wings suddenly beating hurricanes out of the air again, and even Lomadia’s responding curse was lost in the lurching moment of noisy chaos as the creature shot further upwards – away from the light, away from the seething, hissing beam that lanced out across the waves and ripped again into the battered walls.

A few heartbeats later it winked out as fast as it had appeared, leaving nothing but great clouds of evaporating seawater, and a new, ragged tear across the dark stone. It was difficult to see the full impact clearly from there, even as the owl circled round, but the sudden absence of the watchtower’s square bulk was horribly obvious. Rythian swallowed hard against the bile rising in his throat.

_Too slow, Rythian. Always too goddamn slow._

“ _Fuck!_ ” Lomadia’s snapped exclamation, right by his ear, snapped him back out of the darkening thoughts. She was breathing heavily, the acid-twist of helpless fury stark on her face, as she shook her head hard, her harness clinking at the translated movements.

“You utter _bastards_ – it’s a _town_!” She lurched aside, screaming down at the floating shape below, as if the sound could even reach that far, or would be heard if it did. “There are _people –_ just fuck off and leave us the hell alone!”

“Lomadia!” Rythian snapped, trying to be heard over the wind, grasping ineffectually with his pinned arms. “Lo – _focus_. You’ve got to drop me down there.”

That got her attention again, her eyes widening as she swung back to face him.

“What?”

“Drop me down there. I can take it out.” He managed to twist an arm enough to catch hold of her – at that angle he could reach little more than the knee-edge of one of her boots, but it was contact at least – and tried to ignore the clamouring doubts in his own mind.

What choice did he have, really?

“I promise,” he said softly, although whether she could even hear him over the airborne chaos was very far from certain. Lomadia’s gaze flicked, rapidly, between his shrouded face and the scene below; her brow furrowed as she hesitated – then she sighed and clapped a gloved hand into his shoulder.

“Okay.” She swung back, further out over the yawning drop with that gymnastic ease of hers, and his earpiece crackled again. “Just… take care, Ryth. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Would I ever?” he replied, trying to sound a bit more casual than he felt. He got a brief iron-blue glare in response, before Lomadia tugged her flight goggles back down firmly.

“Yes, you bloody would,” she snapped, then pulled herself back up over the owl’s side, the wind whipping away any more response. Rythian turned his attention back to the ship below as the huge bird banked sharply again, and tried to see patterns in the glow-shifting surface of the forcefields. Find the overlap. There had to be one if Trott had managed to see it, and he could only hope against all chance that it would be wide enough for what he planned.

The owl swung round a few more times – a few more minutes of that horribly uncertain countdown to when the next blast would be – and finally Rythian saw it. There was a clear difference in colour at the front of the field, bulbous around the muzzle of whatever hell-cannon that thing was. The other plates of glowing air tessellated tightly over it, but further towards the rear of the ship there was a second seam, where the field skirted the twisted bulk of some entanglement of towers. It had clearly been easier there to fold two separate fields over each other, rather than closely follow the jagged contours.

He shouted instructions into the comm and felt his avian transport shift again, wings pulling together as it turned to line up for a dive. This would bring them in range of any outer defences – although most of those looked to have been on the little boats, half of which were on fire – so he had to be quick. A few taps on one of the pinning claws, and it shifted grip, re-adjusting with a painful security onto his shoulder, but at least that gave him a free arm.

Rythian fiddled quickly with the small pouch at his waist. He withdrew a smooth shape, scattering its layers of thick padding out into the air, and couldn’t resist staring at it, even with his wind-streaming eyes.

He remembered when the Endermen had been common. They fascinated him – always had, really – with their strange-angled bodies and brilliant eyes; walking endlessly through the midnight hours in unfathomable patterns, slowly shifting earth and stone to apparently-pointless places. He had thought them vanished at first, along with the strangeness of the world, so many years ago. But he had been wrong.

There had been one on the beach, back then. While he had sat, empty and staring out across the endless sea – suddenly there had been one there, a shape of displaced darkness, stark against the day’s light. He had even looked at it; but it didn’t seem to have noticed, or it didn’t care just then. Maybe it had been as confused as he was, because it simply stood there for a long time, staring at nothing, before vanishing in a little glimmer of dark light.

They weren’t magical. Or at least, not in any way he had thought of as magic before, and they were certainly _rarer_ now. But they could be found.

Rythian looked into the pearl, into the swirling mists just beneath the crystal surface, and pressed it gently to his forehead.

“Thank you,” he said, softly, and tightened his grip as he felt the owl shift again. Lomadia shouted a warning into his earpiece. His eyes snapped open and there was the ship, the towers, rising like an angular kracken  from the waves below him. He squinted, lining up his shot, and felt his heartbeat hammering against his ribs.

“Now!” he yelled, and his stomach lurched horribly as the owl let go, swooping back upwards immediately, chased by a few bright-hot rounds of retaliation from one small boat. Gravity clutched greedily at Rythian’s plunging form, but he focused on those last few seconds of momentum, when you could almost _swim_ in the buffeting air if you knew what you were doing. The sea surged up towards him – and he threw the pearl, gritting his teeth as he did so; for either failure or success, because either way this was going to hurt.

It was impossible to keep track of the little green shape as it plunged into the narrow canyon of overlapping field; it bounced oddly against the force-layer, unbreaking against something that was in itself only partly there, and Rythian braced himself.

The pearl bounced again, funnelled down the split seam between fields – and _hit_ – and the world slammed closed around him. The shift was horrible – it was _always_ horrible – a freezing, choking press of elemental darkness that twisted like iced wire through the core of him. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t even scream as the purple-edged oblivion pressed down -

\- and broke apart again, vanished into the swirling, burning-bright smear of sound and light and solidity, and he just managed to fling his numb arms forward, grabbing onto something firm and horozontal before gravity regained its lost interest. The sucking void of the blink-movement took heat, and momentum, and most of his coherence, every time, and Rythian gasped at air that suddenly seemed scaldingly hot in his lungs, as he struggled desperately to regain his own senses.

He didn’t have long. Someone would _notice_ him.

Vision finally resolved again and he realised he was clinging to the side of one of the scaffold-stacks, trying very hard not to be sick. No one was yelling, so he forced his still slightly-dubious muscles to work, taking his weight and swinging him further out of view.

 _Right. Okay. Step one, fine_. _Step two… pending._

He peered out through the latticed metal, trying to get his bearings again. The hulking mass of the cannon was obvious enough – taking up most of the deck in the middle of the ship, starkly-sleek against the disarray of the rest of the boat. Huge ropes of cable were slung across the floor, sparking in some places, and uniformed figures were scurrying around madly everywhere he looked. It was a different breed of chaos in here, under the unearthly glow of the overhead field, and he felt a jolt of grim satisfaction that _they_ weren’t having it too easy either.

The little bomb seemed to weigh down against his back and Rythian combed the scene below, searching for somewhere to place it. He wasn’t entirely sure how powerful the blast was going to be, and he couldn’t afford for it to fail to cripple the device. The deck-side barrel was glowing cherry-red at one end, and being built to deal with whatever the hell it was capable of unleashing made him wary of how much of a dent he’d put in it from there.

It had to have a control room. All those cables had to be going _somewhere_. He scanned again, worrying at the edge of his lip as he did so, and the unfocused mental countdown ticked, thunderously-loud in his mind. Come on, _come on…_

 _There_. There was a sunken area just around the other side of the huge shape, set back and down into the deck, with a similarly bolted-on appearance to the cannon itself. Red-tinted cables trailed out of the front of the squat, bunker-like structure, tracing towards the back of the main device, and Rythian had to hope like hell that was what he was looking for. His gaze tracked up, to where a long, garish banner in blue and brown stretched right across the top of the canon, tethered firmly with one end not far from his own position, the other to a large pole on the other side.

The angular company logo was emblazoned on every surface that seemed capable of holding it, so why they felt the need to put it on a banner as well eluded him – but he wasn’t going to complain. To continue the canvas-borne theme: Big Mistake.

Rythian began to clamber quickly up the girders. Dark-clad, he might pass well enough for a sideglance-shadow unless someone was looking directly at him, and they seemed to have enough of their own problems at deck-level. The scaffold was full of useful angles, so it didn’t take him long to pull himself up level with the banner-ropes, each as thick as moorings, and paused as he tried to judge chances. He would be out of shelter for the first part, but that couldn’t be helped, and it was a damn sight less obvious than trying to get across the busy deck.

Taking a slightly-calming breath, and trying to assure himself this was certainly no trickier than throwing teleportation anchors from owl-velocity, he caught onto the top rope and swung out into the air. The drop yawned away beneath him, but if he had ever had much in the way of vertigo, it had been thoroughly worn out of him in the last few years. The ropes ran along both edges of the banner, passing through thin metal loops along the base of the canvas, and were far enough apart that he could balance his feet on the lower one, while inching along the one above him, if a little awkwardly.

Hand over hand. Foot, grasp and balance. Hand. Hand. Heartbeat thumping in his head, echoed with the countdown, spinning horrible little images through his mind of broken figures in red-hot wreckage. Hand. Foot, grasp, hand and -

 _Slip_.

A slight mistake, mistime between swing and step, and Rythian’s world lurched abruptly upwards. He bit down on a yelp, grasping out frantically, and managed to lock one set of desperate fingers onto the bottom rope as it went past, with a jolt that wrenched at his shoulder. The deck was below, perhaps not _that_ far, all things considered, but certainly far enough to thoroughly break his legs if he fell from here. Figures scurried past, down below his feet, and Rythian tried to grab onto his own extended arm, get enough purchase with his dangling fingers to pull himself back up again.

 _Don’t do anything stupid_.

They were going to see him. The realisation was diamond-hard now, cutting across his thoughts until he could almost scream. They were going to _see_ him – and he was going to fail. Again.

Yelling started, down below, but after a stomach-churning moment of horror Rythian realised that it wasn’t directed at _him_. He peered over his own shoulder, seeing the sudden bloom of fireworks that sprayed out across the front field; a dozen, at least, different types of weapon, ranging from ridiculous to ingenious, and many hybrids of the two, all going off at once and all focused on that one part of the shield. There was clear confusion beneath him, shouting and pointing, and Rythian felt a grim smile reach his lips.

The Wild wasn’t known for giving up. Point taken.

He gritted his teeth and reached up again, finally managing to get another hand on the rope, and swung up to grip it with his ankles too. It was still a miracle that no one saw him, shimmying across the bottom of the banner, but at last the other pole was in front of him and he swung down onto it gratefully. The sunken building – bunker – whatever – was nearby, barely a few metres from the base of the flagpole.

And there was a uniformed figure staring up at him, eyes visibly widened even from there.

 _Goddamn_.

Rythian let go. The metal pole skidded under his gloves, friction heat biting into him as he brought himself rapidly down to a drop-height, and pushed away. His sudden-quarry clearly hadn’t been expecting anyone to be there, let alone _plunging_ , and barely managed a yelp as Rythian hit him in the shoulders, breaking his own fall before toppling them both backwards. There was an unpleasant _crunch_ , somewhere between his thighs, and Rythian rolled aside, very firmly _not_ thinking about it, as his momentum carried him back up onto his feet.

No more time for subtlety. Half a dozen other heads were turning towards him, and he took the moment of collective shock to lunge into a sprint. The one figure directly between him and the probably-control room went down to a running shoulder-charge, flung aside as he dived in towards the bunker and – with nothing else practical to _do_ – hammered on the door.

“Oi! We’ve got a problem!” he shouted, a mad pulse singing in his ears – and luck stayed with him as the door swung open and an irritated expression appeared in the gap.

“Hey, I’m _trying –_ ” the man started, but met Rythian’s elbow coming the other way and went down hard, crumpling back as he dived inside. He slammed the door behind them and locked it, just as the sound of ricochets began bouncing off the other side.

The space inside was quite small, and crowded with components. There was a bank of screens and consoles covering half of one wall – some security footage of the decks, and other parts of the ship on tiny monitors – and the rest seemed to be dedicated to read-outs for the cannon. Or at least, he had to assume it was the cannon. Likely nothing else onboard was operating _quite_ so close to what looked like catastrophic failure, if the sheer amount of red on the displayed bars was anything to go by.

Possibly the thing was going to blow up of its own accord soon enough anyway, but he could certainly make sure.

Technology had never been Rythian’s strongest suite, but he had picked up enough to be fairly sure of how to get things _very_ wrong. The hammering on the door was reaching a similar rhythm to his own heartbeat, as he twisted dials and pulled down on levers, taking the ramping-up of various alarms to be a good sign. Outside, through one of the monitors that the unconscious figure must have been ignoring, he could see frantic activity around the cables that lead out of the building and up to the weapon. Possibly they were trying to disconnect it, but the bundles were already starting to spark. Rythian swung his pack round and pulled out the little bomb, setting it down with exaggerated care for something that had been jolted around as much as it had recently.

_Three minutes. Run like the blazes._

There was a faint sound, just behind him, and Rythian jerked aside as a piece of pipe swung down, missing him by inches and burying itself into the console. He struck back, swinging around to catch the second blow on one forearm, and slammed the heel of his other palm hard into the figure’s gut, doubling him over. He grabbed onto the other man’s hair, rammed his face hard into the sparking console and let go, as his opponent crumpled back to the floor.

“Stay _down_ ,” he snapped, and turned his attention back to the bomb. Three minutes. He glanced up at the door, which was shaking now from the blows against it and frowned. Grey ice was pooling in his stomach. He was going to have a job getting out of here in three minutes.

 _...fair enough_.

Thumbing the plastic case flipped open, Rythian drew a numb caress across the button’s smooth surface. Then he pressed it.

It was anticlimactic. Little lights began to blink on the sides, without even a sound, and Rythian carefully wedged the little shape under the console, hidden as best as he could. It wasn’t like it had to hide from a lengthy search. He straightened up, tilted his head back and let his eyelids slide closed.

“Right.” He dropped his hands to his swords, running his fingers across the hilts for the comfort it would bring, and let out a long breath. “Right.”

“Planning a last stand?”

Rythian jerked round. The uniformed man was propped up against the console now, pressing a bloody hand to his face. His pale eyes were a little glazed, but the stare had an unpleasantly _knowing_ edge to it, somehow. Rythian’s lip curled.

“Save your breath.”

“Oh, come on,” the man shifted himself again, wincing as he dabbed at his split lip, which was dribbling crimson into his beard. “Tall, dark and wild – tell me you’ve at least got a _line_ , right?”

Rythian stooped down, drawing one blade, and brought it up to the man’s throat, hovering over the pale skin.

“Stay down,” he repeated, but the man gave a short laugh, bordering on a giggle.

“Why? I can’t stop that lot now – ” he nodded at the sparking console, a crooked grin sliding onto his face, as his gaze strayed towards the little bomb’s hiding place “ – and you don’t look like someone with a _good_ get-out plan.”

“I don’t – ” Rythian started, but the man reached up and caught the blade lightly between two fingers; there was no blocking pressure, but he tapped the flat of the metal a few times, his eyes never leaving Rythian’s face.

“Want one?”

“ _What?_ ” Rythian jerked back, suspicion flaring, but the man just grinned wider.

“In exchange for the lack of skewering? Getting the hell outa dodge sounds pretty good to me, right now.”

Rythian stared at him. He was lying. He had to be lying – oh and hope was a cruel trickster, sparking sudden and bright under his dulled thoughts – but there was so little time left…

So what did it matter? He frowned, then stood back further and sheathed his katar.

“Alright. But if you’re trying to – ”

“Allow me.” The man leaned forward, still pinching his nose, and his free fingers swiped across the floor where Rythian had been standing. There was a faint click; a square segment of the metal rose up and the man slid it aside, revealing a narrow access ladder. He swung himself forward, dangling his feet over the drop, and _winked_ up at Rythian. “Well, now you've found my shaft – I guess it’s only polite if I go down first?”

Before Rythian could quite formulate a response, the wiry figure dropped away, and the sound of clanging ladders filtered back up. He swore to himself, and followed, yanking the cover back down overhead, and plunging them into darkness.

 _Run like the blazes_.

“What the hell is this?” he snapped, ears straining, as he hurried down the ladder as fast as he dared – although his opponent seemed to be faster, clanging along just down below.

“Back access,” the voice floated back up, a little muffled but suffused with audible grin. “Never build a trap you can’t get out of.”

Rythian snorted. They continued for a bit longer, then the other set of footsteps cut out very suddenly, and he hissed in irritation.

“I don’t have time for this,” he muttered. He shrugged his way out of the mostly-empty pack, dropping it into the blind emptiness beneath him, just to make sure there _was_ a floor. The clanged reply came soon enough, echoing up from the blackness. Rythian drew the torch from his pocket, gripping it tightly, and let go again. The drop wasn’t far; he went down bonelessly as his feet impacted, something skimming past hair-close to his head, and screwed his eyes shut as he thrust the torch upwards and light burst like a small sun in the thick gloom. There was a yelp and Rythian leapt up again, orientating towards the sound, and slammed the other man back into the metal wall, knocking the second length of pipe from his hand.

“You little _bastard_ ,” he snarled, but the man just gave another soft laugh and shook his head. Blood had matted strangely into his moustache, giving him an unsettling double-grin as he looked up.

“You’re pretty good.”

“You have no idea what I am,” Rythian cut back, and slung him away away, stooping to retrieve his torch as he glanced quickly around the space they were in. It was a small room, with an obviously-hinged metal floor, some evenly-spaced racks along the walls, and a large lever. And that was it.

“... there’s supposed to be a boat.” The man actually sounded worried by his own realisation, but Rythian wasn’t going to waste time wondering if he was reading this correctly. He positioned himself at the edge of the room and grasped the lever.

“This way out?”

“Yes – but wait, that’s – ” the man started, but Rythian had already pulled it. The floor shuddered and drew apart, and he stared down into an eerily-lit pool of choppy water, illuminated by a layer of forcefield a few metres beneath. His lips thinned as he glared back up at the man, who almost looked apologetic.

“Hardly going to leave ourselves bare underneath, right? Not total idiots.”

Rythian didn’t have a chance to respond, as a sudden, violent shudder ran through the deck, and he had to grab onto the wall to keep upright. His stomach lurched as he looked up, catching the opposite gaze again, and realised that even on top of the torchlight the gloom was getting a little less thick around them. Another shudder ran through the surrounding metal, accompanied by a reverberating boom that was definitely getting louder – and Rythian’s heart skipped a beat as the forcefield light beneath sudden winked out.

This was it.

He leapt forwards, automatically swinging out a hand to clamp around the other man’s nearest wrist, and dragged them both down into the churning waves a few moments before the channeled firestorm spilled down the shaft, bringing a roaring howl of tearing air with it. Icy darkness swallowed them whole and Rythian struck down, trying to hold onto his captured breath even as the shockwave caught them up, thundering around them in a translated storm of pressure that snapped pain in his ears and hammered new rhythms against his chest.

 _Swim_. He dug down, down into the cool depths, even as the other figure began to struggle against him, increasingly desperate until Rythian turned them upwards, lungs burning as he kicked up towards the hidden sky. Black-bright spots were swimming in front of his vision as they finally broke the surface, rising into a hellfire world of harsh, acrid air and flickering firelight, and even Rythian’s jaw dropped as he stared at the destruction.

They were fairly far away from the battleship now – which had been split in two, both halves sagging into each other across the steaming, hissing canyon of molten metal that had been torn through the centre of the deck. There didn’t seem to be any sign at all of the cannon, although there was plenty of debris embedded into the rest of the ship. The forcefield must have contained the initial explosion, Rythian realised, with a curl of black satisfaction settling its sharpened edges around the base of his mind.

He was kept from too much dark contemplation as the other figure in his little floating tableau increased his thrashing, and Rythian realised it wasn’t just his own proximity that was setting off panic. The bearded face kept dipping beneath the waves, even as his hands scrambled ineffectually at the liquid surface; but he was oddly silent. Drowning men often didn’t make much noise.

Rythian cursed, glancing back up at the groaning split hulk, which was starting to slide further into the ocean’s embrace. They didn’t want to get caught up in _that_ going under. He grasped for a waving arm, and swore more loudly as the man’s hand collided hard with his ear, sending a new ringing pain dancing back through his head.

“For fucks’ sake,” he muttered as he lunged, trying to get a decent grip on the slender chest in front of him while avoiding windmilling arms. Yet the thought hovered there, hot and hard in the front of his mind – to let go, to let the flailing shape vanish beneath the waves with the rest of his blasted comrades, and the sinking remnants of their horrible machine.

Let go. Just let go. It would be so easy, and it wasn’t like he was bloodless in this as it was.

How many were on that ship? How many hadn’t even seen it coming, as his planted bomb unleashed a localised fragment of hell?

_How many in that tower, Rythian? How many did you let die there?_

_Is this one worth it, for your false conscience’s sake?_

So easy.

Rythian’s eyes slid closed, an extended blink, forcing salt water from his eyes. Then he shifted, suddenly, bringing his arm round under the squirming man’s arms, pinning him against himself.

“Stay _still_ you idiot!” he snarled, spitting brine and anger as he grabbed onto the shaking head and tilted it back towards him. “ _I_ can swim. Unless you want to drown, stay still!”

 _Not unless I have to._ That. He had to hold onto that.

He wasn’t sure if he sounded especially believable, or if the other struggling figure had just given up, but the damp thrashing about stilled somewhat and Rythian turned his attention to swimming, towing them both through the chill water. It seemed to take forever, but finally his kicking feet hit solid ground and he staggered out of the filthy surf. The man stiffened again as his unsupported weight returned, and Rythian slung him forward into the shingle, letting go to turn half aside and cough up more stowaway ocean.

There was a scramble of loose stones as the other sodden figure slithered backwards, further up the beach, then stopped as Rythian glanced back and impaled him on a glare. Now he had more time to look at his opponent, he was unremarkable enough – quite tall, thinner than Rythian might have thought from the strength of his earlier flailing, with his wet moustache plastered awkwardly against his cheeks.

He looked… ordinary.

Somehow that was worse.

“S-so, hey there – ” the man started, his blue eyes stretched wide again in a strange hybrid of fear and disbelief, but Rythian cut him off, feeling his own lips curl back into a snarl.

“Shut up.”

The man shifted up onto his elbows, opening his mouth again as if to reply, but suddenly Rythian’s hands were tightening into the ragged remains of his uniform. He wrenched the crumpled figure upright again, slightly surprised at his own action – but the _question_ burned there, sharply-insistent against his other thoughts, rising to his lips barely bidden as he dragged the pale face up to his own.

“ _Why?_ ” he growled, briny spittle peppering the other man’s cheeks, even as he desperately tried to keep his own control; so aware, _so very aware_ of the weight of his blades at his hip. “Why are you bastards here? _What do you want?_ ”

“I just – ” the man hesitated, as Rythian leaned in even further until they were almost nose-to-nose. The man blinked – and just for a second there was something else underneath the fear in those blue eyes, a strange, cool detachment that bled through over into the faint smile that twitched at his lips. He shrugged.

“I just wanted to build,” he said, as the smile spilled further, wide and still bloody from the earlier fight, and Rythian couldn’t suppress a faint shiver at the expression. He let go, shoving the still-grinning figure away, and dropped a hand onto the reassuring hilt of one katar.

“Don’t come back,” he growled, taking another step away. Something in that smile was unnerving him more than it should do. The man straightened up, wincing slightly as there was the sound of another explosion from further along the shore, then he threw Rythian an inappropriately-jaunty salute before he turned and fled into the fire-speckled darkness.

Rythian watched him go, and tried not to sag as the realisation of how tired he was hit him like a mallet. The air was thick with steam and smoke and the various unpleasant sounds of aftermath. The ship was gone, leaving little but bloody cleanup left, and he couldn’t quite conjure up the stomach for that. Everything about him suddenly seemed heavy, sodden and bruised and utterly exhausted, and he started to stumble up towards the cracked-open walls.

The wreckage of the town opened up around him, and he tried not to look too closely at the torn-open buildings, architectural evisceration that spilled shattered furniture and bits of masonry out into the streets. Here and there, little knots of assorted figures were prying girders and fallen stone aside, and Rythian shivered again as old memories lit up anew. He joined the nearest group, and his world narrowed down to triage and searching, adding his protesting muscles to shoring up of defences and less-stable bits of remaining debris.

By the time he found himself alone again, out at the back of the town, the first blush of dawn was starting on the horizon. He dragged himself up the nearest crater-speckled hill, until his legs finally gave out and he flopped down against the grass, staring out at the reddening horizon.

It was possible he should have felt some kind of relief. Another battle, technically turned in their favour. But he just felt numb.

A shadow swept across the hillside, accompanied by a low hoot, and a few minutes later boots crunched into the earth beside him, as Lomadia sat down. Neither of them spoke for some time, watching the bloodstain rays creep over the horizon, casting edges of false gold across the wreckage below. Trails of thick smoke still spiralled upwards, but overhead the sky was remarkably clear.

There was a faint, glassy clink, and Rythian looked up as a grubby bottle appeared in his vision, bubbling slightly at the neck. Lomadia flicked the cap off a second one, and waved the first again.

“You’re sodding insane,” she said, bluntly, and took a long swig. Rythian managed to bully his arm into moving, grasping thickly at the bottle.

“Who brings beer to a siege?” He took a sip, and tried not to gag. “...and what the hell does this taste of?”

“Squid, I think.” Lomadia peered down the neck, then shrugged. “Can’t be choosers.”

Silence fell again, or as much silence as there could be with an owl the size of a large shed shuffling around a few hundred yards away. Lomadia broke it.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For that.”

Rythian frowned and inched his aching form around until he was looking up at her. She had her arms wrapped around her knees, swinging the half-empty bottle, and her eyes were liquid-bright in the pale dawn. He shrugged, awkwardly, as a dozen different threads of thought tangled together, all at once.

“Someone had to.”

“Someone always does.” She shifted, looking down at him over her own arms. “Often as not, it’ll be you though. You always – ”

“I let one of them go,” Rythian cut in, a little quickly. He took another almost accusatory swig of the beer, grimacing around it. “Back on the beach. Looked right in his face.”

“So?”

“ _So?_ ” Rythian swung the bottle emphatically towards the smouldering wreckage of the town. “So _that_. They’re throwing all this at us, and – but I couldn’t…” he cut off, the words sticking and twisting behind his lips. “Just some idiot on a ship, got us both out to save his own hide. It would’ve been so easy, and I just…” he trailed off again, and it was only the exhaustion that stopped him from jumping, as Lomadia laid a hand on his shoulder. Her fingers tightened lightly against the damp fabric, and a thin smile crept onto her dusty features.

“You’re a good man, Ryth. Better than you give yourself credit for.”

Heat uncurled under his cheeks and Rythian shook his head, chastising his own skin.

“I just… wish I knew what was going _on_ ,” he said quietly, as his own hand – barely bidden – rose up to press gently over hers. “There’s more than just resources at stake, surely. The _cost_ of all this; and we at least get the debris to work with. What is it about here?”

Lomadia looked back round, her blue-steel gaze tracking back through the still-rising plumes of smoke, and out across the shimmering plain of sea.

“Or,” she muttered, as she tipped back the last dregs of beer and her expression darkened again. “What is it about _there_ that they’re all so fucking eager to get away from?”

It was a good point; well made.

And he really, _really_ wished she hadn’t said it.

-


	3. Pyrrhical concerns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The war ended, but it wasn’t a victory.

The war ended the way it had begun: erratically, and trailing poison in its wake.

It was difficult to pinpoint an exact time, a true turning point in the vying hostilities, but it had gradually become clearer and clearer that _something_ had changed. There were fewer new weapons, and those that did exist were more conventional, even less able to deal with the Wildlanders' unpredictable responses than before. Fewer industrial juggernauts ploughing through the angry waves, and fewer troops pouring from their steel-bound mouths. Just _fewer_ , of everything. And when even the hellsdamned Sipsco machines stopped coming, the change was undeniable.

It was over. But it wasn't a victory.

Years of constant warfare had taken their toll, in blood and raw exhaustion, tearing through land and flesh alike, and the ragged cohesion of the Wild only held up as long as there _was_ something to unite the disparate groups. Many of the fortified towns, so determinedly-defended only a few short months ago, fell back into the ruined earth as their lifeblood defenders drifted away. Internal scuffles broke out in surviving settlements, fragments of old ideologies clashing and burning along with new grudges born in conflict, sparking hot bursts of fresh conflict within the cooling mess of aftermath.

Some of those twisted ideas were more persistent than others, and the _deserved_ Fall of mages was one of them. The refugees kept coming, even through the breaker-wrecks that now littered the coast; tesificate, human, and a few other blends that would once have found no problem fitting into the shifting culture of the wild; but now, somehow, that foreign-born _suspicion_ had taken hold, curling rotten tendrils into minds too exhausted by ragged warfare to fight back within themselves.

Where once-mages went, destruction had followed. The world had thrown off the taint of magic once before – but it was well known how many of _them_ toiled to recover the use of it, even now.

What else would they bring down?

It was different for Rythian, this time. Reworked as he had been, by his own hand and the unforgiving forge of a hundred unchosen battles, even the very foolish shied from direct confrontation there. But the whispers swirled around him anyway, sharpened suspicion in rumour's form, and found targets that they _could_ touch.

The first time was Lomadia, and it _had_ been a surprise then. He had thought a kind of immortality to her, in a way – a steel-eyed Fury aloft on giant's wings – and the day she had returned black-bloody and with a grim smile on her cracked lips, it had shaken him deeply. 'You should see the other guys,' she quipped, even as she waved away his shocked offers of aid, carefully dabbing disinfectant against her broken skin.

She wore the bruises like a crown, of course – challenging, with the promise of recompense twined firmly through every movement; though it couldn't dull the ice that crept across his own thoughts, the sickening lurch in his gut as he saw yet again the glints of suspicion in trailing gazes, so much worse now for the once-familiarity in those harbouring eyes. But there was nothing more there – not yet – and he almost found himself believing the one-time assurance of isolated, violent stupidity.

The second time, there was no doubt. It was with the Sirs – that triumvirate of really _reliable_ madness that Rythian had found himself beside so many times in the last years. Gifted destruction might have been part of their collective expertise, but there was skill enough on the other side of that coin, and at first he had been glad to find them all back in the same place. Ross' architectural aptitude extended much further than just re-bracing of barricades; walls and buildings alike began to reform under his guidance, rising from their own debris like a very civic sort of scaffold-wreathed phoenix. The other two pitched in where they best fitted – skilled hands at restorative engineering and focused demolition – and it worked so well that Rythian could almost ignore the occasional suspicious glances in Trott's direction, or furtive mutterings that followed Smiffy's steps down the reforming streets.

Later, he wondered if he just hadn't wanted to see it, hadn't wanted to believe that the towns he had spilled so much blood defending could turn so quickly.

 _Denial, Rythian. It's not one of your best traits_.

It had happened in a late evening. Maybe just long enough for drink and simmering bile to have curdled each other into something worse; or maybe there had been a specific trigger, he never found out – but then there was murder in the air, and Rythian had found himself sprinting across half-formed rooftops, fear lending him a frantic agility as he cleared streets from above, following the cracks of skyward weapon-fire and a guttural susurrus of mobbing voices.

He found them near the edge of town – three figures, backing awkwardly away down between the new-rising guard towers, pursued by a growing knot of furious shapes. Ross was at the fore, wearing the tatters of a half-shed harness, armed with little more than his tools; he must have still been building – Rythian realised – as he so often did, sleep unwelcome in the careful mania of construction. Blueprints had spilled out of his gaping pack, trampled unheeded under advancing feet, and Rythian tried not to look at them as he clambered up onto the walls and darted on, heart in his mouth.

He was just close enough when the first shot was fired. It went wide, ricocheting off the new-cut stonework; Ross winced and raised his trowel defiantly as the rifle-wielding figure adjusted for another shot – then the shooter went backwards with a yelp as Rythian dropped down into the clear space, a shifting thing of cloaked shadow to any watching eyes. He caught the barrel in one gloved hand as he landed, wrenching it up and back, and slammed the butt hard into its owner's face. He took the moment of sudden shock to draw his own blades, liquid bright in the advancing torchlight, and swung out in front of the retreating trio.

" _Stop this_ ," he snarled, putting all the threat he could generate into his voice. It seemed to work, as there was a general halt to the advancing crowd, and a new outbreak of muttering within its heart. They recognised him, of course, and he clearly hadn't been expected.

"Jesus fucking christ, mate, you know how to make an entrance." Ross' voice shook with unsuppressed relief, and Rythian took a chanced second to glance back at the familiar group. What he saw, now he was closer, sent a spear of jagged ice down his spine.

Ross looked bad enough – one eye was already swelling closed, and there was an ugly slash down his arm – but the other two had clearly taken the brunt of whatever had happened. They were upright, possibly only because they were failing to fall through each other. One of Trott's tusks was shattered, and his habitual white coat was now wrapped tight around Smiffy's shoulders, mottled with strange cyanic staining that looked to be seeping through from beneath. The green man was slumped across his friend, his outsize eyes glazed and heavily-lidded. There were blunted marks scattered across his face, mirrored across Trott's own thick skin, and several looked a lot like boot prints.

Rythian's gaze lanced back across the mob, and he felt a slight curl of dark satisfaction at how they winced where it landed. He struggled to get his voice calm, while rising anger crackled and howled inside his throat.

"What the hell is going on?" he demanded, scanning the crowd for anyone brave or idiotic enough to be willing to answer him. Distance gave confidence, and a few voices piped up from somewhere in the back.

"No place for monsters!"

" – creeping around in the night – "

" – can't trust – turn your back on – "

" – go back to – "

"Enough!" Rythian snapped, slicing one of his katars across in front of him – it was dramatic, yes, but it made the point, and the rising shouts died back. He glanced over at Ross again, who had given a wordless, strangled sound at the accusations. His face was crimson-pale, mottled with fury, and he shook his head violently, whipping tight curls around his face.

"I had to pull half a dozen off them," he said, through teeth that were clenched so hard the expression twisted his face into a rictus. "We don't even have – "

"I know," Rythian replied, quietly, and Ross seemed to sag slightly, taking another step back. There was a surge of movement at the front of the crowd, but it stopped as Rythian dipped forwards, eyes narrowing. Options buzzed at the back of his mind, and he tried not to look like he was counting. This was a _lot_ of opponents; and the idea of using lethal force, even now, on _Wildlanders_ sent a fresh coil of nausea dancing through him.

"Go home," he said, sharply, flicking his gaze between the most irate-looking faces in the crowd; familiar figures made alien in their tangled hate. "Because going _forward_ goes through me."

He shifted position as he spoke, in emphasis, and watched the opposing calculations play out across their faces. There was a blurred, invective mutter from behind him, which came as somewhat of a relief. If Trott could _swear_ , he probably was in at least a functional shape.

Ross moved a little closer behind Rythian and laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Fuck the lot of them," he muttered, anger thick in his lowered voice. "Smiff's going to _burn_ things when he gets his wits, and I'm in no mood to stop him if we're still here. Fuck this game of bloody soldiers. We're out."

There was muttering from the bolder members of the crowd – mourning the chance of loss, as the mob-mind bayed for prey – but it cut out as Rythian swivelled his blades again and tried to keep his own desperation off his face.

"Go," he muttered, risking a glance at the two propped-together shapes behind Ross, and felt bile clutch at the back of his throat.

After everything they had done; the mad plans, the impossible odds swept aside with that three-way cracked genius – and it had come to this. Hounded out of the very town they were putting back together; or maybe worse, if _he_ had been only a little later. It was obscene. It was _wrong_.

"Ryth, mate, you take care. Get out while you can." Ross' fingers tightened, just for a second, and Rythian's stomach lurched at the sudden worry that poured into the man's voice. "Come find us – you and Lom – when you do, alright? You don't owe the bastards anything else."

Rythian had nodded. There didn't seem much else appropriate to do, as Ross let go, hoisting his pack, and headed after the concussed-tableau of his friends. Rythian turned back to the mob, stepping more determinedly than he felt into the centre of the pockmarked road, and held his blades out either side. He didn't speak, didn't need to; just stood there, a line in the sand, feeling history peeling apart around him as the strange trio vanished past the empty towers and out into the darkness.

He stayed there until the crowd began to disperse, and only retreated as far as the vague shelter of the watchtower after that, visibly watching the road until whatever bloody madness had been abound that night began to fade under the rising rays of dawn. No one tried to go after the vanished figures, and it wouldn't be long before they were far enough out that their tracks would fade quickly.

 _This is all wrong_.

Rythian pulled his cloak tighter around himself, unmoving, and tried not to feel quite so sick. What had been the point of it all, if _this_ was going to happen here anyway?

In the battles, even the hopeless ones – even the ones he had only gotten out of by the skin of his teeth, or by some bizarre combination of stolen chance and somebody else's bad luck – he had at least known what to fight and how to do it, even if the specifics had to be worked out on the fly.

But this? Where you were supposed to be safe – or as safe as could be reasonably expected – when that turned against you, how the hell did you fight _that?_

_You don’t owe the bastards anything else._

True. But that had never really been the point, had it?

What else could he have done?

Nothing.

Everything.

His gloved fingers tightened, fabric creaking under his grip, as he stared out across the landscape, tracing the barely healed-over gouges in the earth, each sprinkled with a faint return of grass, but still raw. The war was over, but _something_ hadn't died with it, something that still twined its vile tendrils further and further out across the world. Maybe it was wishful thinking on his part, searching for a definite _enemy_ , rather than just the socially-necrotic mess that was going so rancid around him now, but the echo of senses he no longer had were ghosting along the back of his mind.

_' What is it about  _there_  that they’re all so fucking eager to get away from?'  
_

Lomadia's words rose up again through his thoughts, repeating as they had so many times since and prompting the same cold shiver along with them. Rythian's lips thinned. If he was looking for the source of all this, _here_ , he was looking in the wrong place. This poison had come across the waves, before the war had even started. Before…

His musing trailed off, cut across with a suspicion sharp enough to _hurt_ , and his fingers tightened so suddenly it was almost a spasm, curled against the shades of rings long gone. He had walked the Wilds for years, searching for any hint of magic, and had heard similar stories to his own a dozen times from other wanderers. All searching for a clue, a hint to where the once so-common power had gone, if any remained, or how it might be brought back.

But none of them had ever encountered anything to suggest _why_ it had gone, either, and he felt sure there should have been something left to find. Every wound left a scar, if you knew how to look. The more he had searched, the surer he had become that there was something _else_ happening here. It was strange to think about this, after all these years, but the thoughts streamed past like a torrent of quicksilver now, pouring down over him until all he could do was flow along with them, trying to keep up with himself.

Magic had always waxed and waned, and even relatively recent texts talked of sudden shifts in the exact nature of the baseline power, great swings in thaumic polarity. But a _loss_ of magic, not a change, the dreadful sundering that had almost taken Rythian's own mind into the Void along with it – that was something else. Not part of any cycle, not a reaction to naturally-unfathomable tides in the etheric auras.

Magic hadn't died. Magic had been _killed_.

It was only a theory, of course – but the enormity of the idea, the possibility that something could _do_ that, made Rythian's skin crawl so violently he had to clutch onto himself, feeling the horrified, bone-deep shudder running up and down his limbs. He reached down to his hip, curling one shaking hand carefully around the padded bag there, and tried to draw what comfort he could from the shrouded feel of the few enderpearls that remained.

He had to know. The realisation was like a leaden weight in his mind, dragging down against all other thoughts with the unassailable gravity of it, leaving him light-headed and nauseous, all at once, and his head spun with sudden, ridiculous calculation. Lomadia was – thankfully – away, tackling one of the eastern trade roads made impassable to anything but air. He could stay here for a few more days, making sure that no one got it into their heads to go after the battered trio, and then…

There were bigger towns than this one, up and running again. Bigger ports. More and more of the pressure between schisming interest groups, and even the unthinkable possibility of a route _back_ across the ominous expanse of contested ocean.

The third time, it was going to come after _him_ – and he would be ready for it.

-

He wasn't, of course.

But it was nice to think he'd _had_ a plan.

-


	4. Unwelcoming party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rythian finds more than even he had bargained for, when he encounters the Labs.

He should have expected this.

The repeating thought was like a second heartbeat, hammering in Rythian’s head again and again and again until it _hurt_. A lot of things hurt.

What the hell had he been thinking? That he could just hop onto one of the few cramped trade barges – those that still dared the crossing, risking their steel-enforced skins against breaker-wrecks that lurked beneath the black tumescence of the waves – and just waltz out into whatever settlement he found himself in? That no one would notice him, or _recognize_ him, when he had worn reputation like a second skin for all these years; shielding him on his own soil and making a bloody highlight of displaced bravado on another.

The foreign port had risen before them, strangely sudden against the peeling-back horizon, and so much larger than he had imagined it to be. Great grey monoliths of worked stone flanked the tamed bay-waters, peppered with the myopic slits of windows made insignificant against the blunted bulk of it all. Walkways were slung out between buildings, webbing the harshly-functional structures in an industrial net of gantry and chain and cable. Dry docks had been scooped out of the rebuilt shore, cradling the half-finished – or half-broken, it was hard to tell – husks of huge ships.

Just their ragged silhouettes had stirred fresh unease into Rythian's mind, as he recognised the shapes of them – although they were more usually framed against fire and warring-chaos, rather than listing slightly in their own bindings. But the battleships were oddly still now and he had noted, as his own dwarfed craft had swung a careful arc around one of those silent hulks, where the first edges of rust were starting to bloom along unfinished edges, where cranes and construction equipment hung listless above their charges.

It all looked neglected – abandoned, almost – and the only new-gleam of fresh metal visible was across the prows, where the horribly-familiar Sipsco logo was screamingly obvious in its _absence_. Rythian had seen the ghost of it, across his mind's eye, but the actual branding was gone, peeled raw away from the ship's mottled skin. The sight was curiously disconcerting.

_What had happened here?_

The town itself wasn't abandoned – far from it – and the density of jostling crowds on the docks had surprised him too, but not so much as their _uniformity_. Humans and testificates, all dressed quite similarly, with perhaps slight variations in colour and tweaks to common designs. The testificates wore their faces bare, and he would admit to no great familiarity in the nuance of their expressions, but the humans weren't much easier to read. There was certainly a tension in the air though, and Rythian had caught the occasional glance up towards the bulk of the scoured-off ships, lingering there longer than idle curiosity would determine.

What had he thought to find? Deserted settlements, maybe, empty in the aftermath of some unknown disaster? Something like that, actuallly. The war had ended so strangely from their side that he had imagined there to be a more obvious _reason_ for that change.

Had he expected to just walk right into it?

Well – fair enough – as it turned out, he did just that. But very, very far away from how he had intended to.

Many details of what had happened were fuzzy, even now – in his still-swimming mind, blurred with the edges of wearing concussion, and the fading twists of drugged incapacity still drifting through his battered frame – but he remembered the shouting that had broken out behind him. Remembered turning, as the jostling mass of citizenry seemed to melt away – moving with practised, silent efficiency as they drew out of the confrontation – and he had seen the first of the armoured figures condense out of the crowd-line.

They _were_ different to anything he'd faced before. The armour was sleek, white-silver shaped plates that sat snugly across limbs a little longer than natural variation would endow; the helmet was blank-smooth and unadorned with patterning, except for the outsize blue bulges that hid the eyes, adding an unpleasantly-insectile air to the whole arrangement. But he hadn't had time to dwell much on aesthetics, as the plated shape raised its arm and Rythian saw bright lines flash into life around the wrist – and had just managed to leap aside, abandoning caution as his sharpened reflexes jerked him away from the net of crackling energy that missed him by a hair and sank, sizzling, into the floor.

Perhaps someone from the ship had let slip, or let on. Perhaps he just stuck out, even with his blades covered and strapped firmly beneath his travel-pack, and his cloak folded to resemble a long coat more than anything within the sartorial phylogeny of 'robes'. Or perhaps he just really _was_ that unlucky.

 _Probably all three_.

The overhead forest of walkways, jutting support poles and strung-out cabling had been tantalizingly close, and Rythian had taken his chance as his sudden-assailant recalibrated for another shot. A few swift dodges, some scrambling up the side of the nearest dockside stack of cargo-crates, and a couple of fast-foot impacts on surprised shoulders below – and he had managed to catch onto the bottom rung of a half-lowered ladder, hoisting himself up quickly, expecting to feel the impact of another net at any moment.

It didn't come, because the armoured shape had _followed_ him. Just as he caught his footing on the narrow walkway at the ladder top, there was a faint grind of servos, and a too-close _clang_ as the figure launched from a near-standing start, little lights flaring at the base of its clearly-augmented legs, and landed with blunted grace on the other end of the platform. Rythian had ducked away again, scrambling further up into the tangled mess of the building's outer skin, trying to ignore the sudden lance of cold fear that sliced down his spine. He wasn't accustomed to competent pursuit. Even the most agile of the troops he was used to hadn't been able to keep pace with him for more than a short burst of mid-conflict repurposed-parkour – so this was an unpleasant development.

Another clang, from further down, and Rythian's heart had surged into his throat as he caught a glimpse of another figure, far too close – and below that, more smooth-moving pale shapes in the crowd below.

_Oh god._

His world had narrowed then, down to the shift and strain of his own muscles, his own tight breathing as he had dodged and weaved at a bizarre set of angles within the vertical metal forest – which now threatened to ensnare as much as to shelter – trying to maintain the ever-closing gap between him and the pursuit. He remembered running, and a moment of free air above and around him as he had sprinted towards the next building – and then a burst of pain in his ankles as something caught and wrapped around his legs, taking his balance and sending him crashing down into the gritty rooftop. His pack had gone flying as he scrabbled for his katars, sawing frantically at the sudden bind; it had given, under edge and desperation, but the pause had been enough and they were on him.

He had fought back, of course, because what else was there to do? His strikes glanced off the smooth armour plates, less so where he managed to wedge the vicious tips of his blades into joints. He was fairly sure that he had managed to wound a few of them, but the faceless shapes had kept coming, swarming in around him, until even his bad bloody luck had run out.

That had been _then_. A few days ago, maybe; exact divisions in time had blurred together as his coherence slowly returned – and he half-wished it hadn't bothered.

Now, there was an unforgivingly unyelding softness strapped around his limbs, binding them down at the joints to the half-lined board at his back. Another band passed across his forehead, linking two curved pads that pressed sternly into the sides of his face. He couldn't move, couldn't even breath deeply, and there were thick strips of tape across his eyes and mouth, moving awkwardly with his skin whenever he twitched the underlying muscles.

It hurt. Most of him did – dull aches from recent impacts, a few sharper cuts scattered about his battered form like emphasis – but everything else paled under the angry agony sawing back and forth across his face, from the four vicious, ragged slashes that had been torn into his mouth, splitting his lips and spilling a foul mix of bloody spittle and mucus down the raw gullies.

They had laughed, back on that cursed rooftop. The armoured figures, brave with anonymous cruelty as they had finally pinned him down, prying his fingers back against themselves until the blades fell free. Flipped onto his back, straddled, held down – although even now he could find an edge of black satisfaction at how many of them it had needed to _do_ that – as the apparent leader, faceless and goggle-eyed behind their helmet, had drawn a short, jagged blade and laughed as the teeth of it sank into Rythian's skin.

_'C’mon, mage-boy, give us a proper smile!'_

They'd shown him, afterwards, forcing his eyes open in front of something reflective; laughing again at his shuddered response, as he had stared at the rough 'M' carved deeply into his flesh. Branded, and helpless to stop it.

Rythian's fingers twitched, tightening into impotent fists for the umpteenth time, as his nails bit anew into the half-moon gouges peppered across his palms. He wasn't quite so sure of what had happened afterwards – a sharp blow to the back of his head had taken his coherence if not his senses entirely – but the next muted memories were all while bound. Trussed with others in some dim-light metal space, with unseen motion wringing waves of fresh nausea from his bruised stomach.

Then there had been bright, blinding-white light and an accompanying commotion, as he was bundled out and yanked from side to side, blurry figures examining his face, digging unforgiving fingers into his cramping muscles. Before he had even managed to pull together enough of his wits to struggle, a cold, chemical burn had hissed against his arm – and then it had all been fragments again, scattered around outside the shell of assorted agonies that encased him now.

Now. _Now_ was... somewhere. The blinding bind had taken his vision, and the rest of his senses were swamped or dulled by a cocktail of confusion, fear and whatever they'd drugged him with. He was horizontal, and had been for some time. There was a vibration dimly happening beneath him that probably indicated movement – which was quite new – and he tried to bully his brain into making sense of any of it. Moving. He was being taken somewhere else, wherever he was. There didn't seem to be any wind happening, and the only sounds he could hear – muffled by the pads either side – were faint clicks and footsteps, so he was probably inside.

And that was it. There was nothing he could do but wait and listen to the furious – and, if he were being really honest, _utterly terrified_ – self-berating bouncing around inside his skull.

He had just walked right into this. Stupid. _Stupid_.

There was a jolt, then a sickening moment of shifting gravity. Rythian just had time to realise his board had been swung upright, when the blinding strips were yanked free, wrenching at his torn skin as the adhesive pulled sharply away. A cry escaped before he could even think to stop it, jerking an answering shock-sudden spasm down his body and he slumped, panting, against the restraints. Fingers dug into him again – his arms, his shoulders, and tightened for a moment against the swollen line of his jaw – and he finally managed to make out the edges of words past the dull buzzing in his ears.

“ – sually athletic for one of these. Yes, we can work with this.”

He didn't know the voice; it was probably male, but it was the idleness of the interest in those tones that was the most disconcerting. Rythian tried not to move as the hand let go, and he sagged against his bindings a little more. He wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders, but better they thought he was _really_ out of it. There were footsteps again, moving around him, and a faint metallic _clink_.

“Blank her; prep him. I'm going to get a few more things to try.”

An answering noise happened, too softly for Rythian to make out, and he heard the footsteps retreat again. The urge to open his eyes was almost overwhelming, and he bit down on his own macabre curiosity.

 _Blank her_.

Was there someone else here? Lomadia's face rose across his mind for a moment – her more usual visage, the slightly-wry smile that she tended to wear, followed immediately by the bruised scowl following her fight; after someone had come after her, because of him – and a tiny flicker of fury caught again under the blurred mess of Rythian's thoughts. It was little more than a spark, a pilot light in the dark of his battered despair, but it was _something_ to draw himself around.

There was another sound and he finally chanced easing one eye open, just a crack. Most of what he could see was the fine grating of a metal floor, thickly caged by his eyelashes. Not enough. He steeled himself and quickly blinked both eyes open, ignoring the protest from more muscles and bits of skin than he wanted to count, then shut them again, mind whirling.

The room was large – larger than he was expecting, more what he would think of a sort of _hall_ – and clinically-stark. Rows of wide-spaced tables stretched out down the centre, several metres apart and linked up to banks of computer screens against the far wall. They were surrounded by trolleys and stacks of equipment that he hadn't seen clearly, and got the impression he wouldn't want to even if he could have done so. Many tables had seemed to be occupied, but only on the one closest to Rythian had that occupant been _moving_.

It smelled of disinfectant, over a faint, lingering metal edge that the chemical scent hadn't quite obscured.

Footsteps clicked again, coming closer. Rythian felt hands close on his right arm again, felt the strap loosening – _but not enough, not like this, not with every muscle a knot of exhausted pain **goddammit –**_ but practised fingers had pinned his elbow back down firmly before he could even try to capitalise on the chance. An advancing needle gleamed, sharp-bright, through his half-lidded gaze.

He had to do something. He had to _move_ , but he was tired, he was so tired and he could feel his moment of resolve slipping back into the fog and the ache and maybe he would just –

A sudden cry cut across the muffled silence, high and sharp and… oddly well pitched? The pressure on his arm shifted – surprised – and was followed by a faint hiss of pain. Rythian looked down, focusing on where a thin bead of crimson had risen against the restraining blue-white gloves. The labcoat-clad figure in front of him missed his sudden attention as they half-turned to glare back at the table, rubbing at their distraction-injured hand.

She was singing. The woman, the one he couldn’t properly see, the one strapped down as surely as he was, for whatever horror-purpose this room had. The sound was shaky, and the notes cracked and shivered at their edges in a voice that sounded as exhausted as his own – but she was _singing_.

 _Blank her_.

A moment of raw surprise jolted through him, but it was like iced water this time, dragging freezing, urgent clarity behind it – because the strap was still loose, the pressure gone from his arm, and _he had to move right now_. Pain burned anew in his maltreated limb as he pulled back, gritting his teeth, and for a horrible heartbeat nothing happened, angle and bone and restraint just _not – quite – right_ –

– and then the loosened bind pulled away in a mad moment of resurrected chance, and Rythian’s arm shot forward, half-controlled. His desperate grip latched onto the nearby labcoat collar and wrenched back as hard as he could – because there was only one shot at this and he was entirely out of other options.

Cartilage crunched against his pinioned forehead, exploding twin supernovas of pain behind his own eyes, but the figure in his grip barely managed to yell before they went down like an unstrung puppet, clutching at their broken nose. Rythian grasped round, trying to stop the shaking in his fingers as he scrambled with the bind on his other arm. It was awkward, and seemed to take an eternity to loosen, but then he had both hands – _oh god thank you –_ and then his shoulders and his neck and it was all he could do not to crumple forwards, balancing precariously back on the tilted board as he finally freed his feet.

The other figure was starting to get up, starting to shout, so Rythian… well, _fell_ on them would be the most accurate description, breaking his collapse on the labcoat-clad shape with a fresh _whuf_ of expelled air. He glanced around, found the little metal gleam just within thankful reach, and sank the needle into somewhere fleshy, pinning the other struggling shape down until they finally went limp.

 _…good **god**_.

Everything hurt. Even worse than when he had been still, and he couldn’t push back the liquid heat in his eyes, or the agonised mumbling that spilled out through his ravaged lips. He was free, but he was in no state to do anything, and he had absolutely no idea where _here_ even was. He –

 _Blank her_.

The singing was still happening, although there were definite sobs amongst the notes now, and Rythian pried himself into an awkward crouch, shuffling forward across the rough grating floor until he could drag himself up against the nearby metal table. He blinked stupidly at the scene – at the schematics projected onto the surface, at the upturned tray of vicious-looking instruments, like some horrible hybrids of medical and engineering tools.

What _was_ this?

No time. Lurid green cables ran out from the back of the table and up to the main screens; the readouts specifics were gibberish to him, but there were several bits that looked ominously like progress bars. Rythian stared down at the figure on the table, and tried not to wince. She was clad in… well, bandages, mostly, and his unsettled gaze tracked across her, seeing where odd raised areas and thin crimson lines traced strange, subdermal patterns beneath her too-pale skin. There were definitely hints of other material here and there, where the flesh hadn’t quite closed back over some implanted _thing_ , and both her arms were completely artificial – the dark-metal hands visibly extra-jointed, with tiny rows of green lights dotted down the backs of her fingers, and some sort of gearing at her wrists. He thought again of the soldiers who had captured him, faceless and cruel, and he hesitated.

But she had been singing.

There was a soft, unpleasant beep from the surrounding equipment, and Rythian looked up sharply as the screen began to flash. The cables were going to a strange device on her head – like an over-stylised metal hand, clamped down hard enough to bruise between sweat-tangled ropes of red hair – and small lights were starting to flicker atop it. That couldn’t be good.

“I have _no idea_ what I’m doing,” he muttered, thickly, and grabbed hold of the device. The woman’s face twisted, her voice finally cutting out in a strange yelp, and Rythian gritted his teeth as he pried at the hinges on the thing. It resisted, but clearly hadn’t been designed to be more than firmly secured. A bit more effort and it broke away in a shower of sparks – and the redhead _screamed_. He jerked back as her eyes snapped open – twin points of over-bright blue, suddenly wide and frantic – and she jolted upwards, tensing against the restraints still in place against her.

“ – get it _off – get it off!_ ” She thrashed violently from side to side and Rythian grabbed her shoulders, feeling the shift and whir of hidden mechanisms somewhere beneath the skin. He tried to push her back down, but he might as well have tried to press his hands through the table itself.

“I’m trying!” he insisted. “You have to lie still, I can’t – ”

Her wild eyes fixed on him and she hesitated. There were little shifts of cybernetic layers jerkily flowing around her pupils, but the panic looked genuine enough.

“Who are - ? You’re not – ” she cut off again, obviously staring at the mess of his lips, and for a weird moment Rythian was almost glad of the wounds. No one would do that to themselves on _purpose_ , even for deception. He released one hand, lessening the pressure on the other, and groped for the releases on her binds.

“We’re getting out of here,” he said, firmly, as the first restraint gave way, and she seemed to accept that, falling back into a tensed stillness as he fumbled with the edges of the table. It seemed to take an absolute age, but finally the last catch came loose and the redhead wrenched herself free from the rest of the apparatus, trailing drip feeds and less-identifiable incursions. Rythian slumped onto his elbows, then slid down the table into an ungainly heap as his knees gave out again, sending him sprawling back onto the floor.

Footsteps clanged, then her pale face appeared in his blurring vision again, staring at him as though he was something absurd.

“So… hey. Okay, no offence, but you look _terrible_.”

Rythian laughed. He hadn’t meant to, and he regretted it instantly as the halting breath seemed to set off every angry nerve once again, but the sheer _ridiculousness_ of it seemed to snap something loose inside him and the sound broke out anyway. He shook his head – again, not a fantastic idea – and tried to get control back over his own diaphragm.

“Thanks. You… alright?” he managed, warily, quite aware of the layers of extra meaning that slung out around those words. The woman looked down at herself, her grey-metal fingers curling for a tense moment, then she shrugged.

“Not really, no. But, y’know – still breathing, right? I think. And still _here_.” She pressed the palm of one hand to her bloody forehead, and gulped. “Kinda. Enough, I guess.”

“Got to – get out,” Rythian forced the words past his throbbing lips, but nausea was swirling up his throat again, mirroring the exhaustion sinking back across his thoughts. He barely had the energy to jump as the woman sank down, pulling one of his arms across her shoulders, and straightened up as if he wasn’t even there. Things clicked slightly, under her skin, but if she noticed she didn’t say anything.

“C’mon. Someone’s gonna _hear_ this,” she muttered, and Rythian finally realised that alarms had started, a rising background whine of enraged electronic sound. He tightened his grip, taking a bit more of his own weight – not that she seemed to actually need the help – and they lurched off across the room, past the other tables of still-silent figures.

She wasn’t looking at them, he realised, by about the third one. Very deliberately not looking at them.

How many had she known? Were they all strangers here, like him, or…? He cut the thought, and concentrated on moving. Time slipped a little, and when focused awareness finally came back he had been wedged into the gap between two counters, head lolling back against the metal. He squinted vaguely around the new space. They were in a much smaller room, floor-to-ceiling high with clear-fronted drawers and small cupboards, and his unexpected companion was rooting quickly through one of the nearest stacks.

“W’re we?” His voice didn’t seem to be working properly, and Rythian struggled to follow the redhead’s movements as she drifted in and out of his sight, searching more drawers, before finally squatting down beside him. She laid a cool hand carefully on his cheek and caught his gaze.

“Pharmacy room. It’s all going mad out there, but I don’t think they’ve figured out where we went yet. I’m… I’m gonna give you some stuff, alright? It’ll help.” She held up a couple of thin cylinders, and raised the first one towards him – then stopped as he winced, unable to avoid the wary spasm that shied him away from the needle-tip, spiraling too-recent memories up around the vision.

Who _was_ she? He didn’t even…

“I’m Zoey,” she said quietly, as if reading his mind, and carefully grasped his hand with her free fingers. “ _Still_ Zoey. Pretty sure.”

There was a stretched-out moment, as chance and choice weighed heavily against each other, then Rythian swallowed and managed a shaky squeeze in response.

“Rith. Ry’thn. _Rythian_ ,” he mumbled, and let himself flop back, nodding as Zoey raised the syringe again, questioningly. He was dimly aware of tapping, then a series of sharp sensations against his forearms, and the _click_ of discarded tubes. Zoey sat back again beside him, drawing her knees up until she could hug them, although she shivered as her chin pressed against the dark metal of her own arms.

“How’d they get you?” she asked, suddenly. Rythian blinked.

“Huh?”

“How’d they get you? I mean, y’don’t… _look_ like a mage. Other than – that. Now. Any excuse, I guess.” She gestured a bit awkwardly at her own mouth, and Rythian pressed down on the urge to grimace. His ragged lips still hurt a _lot_ , but there was a faint numb edge spreading through the skin now, which he had to hope was intentional.

“I _was_.” It was probably a stupid thing to admit, even now, but he found the words on his tongue anyway. “Long time ago.”

Zoey looked down at him quizzically, but the edge there was more surprise, and a hint of curiosity.

“...for real?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” She stopped, and fiddled with one of the lights near her elbow. “Wow. So… I mean, you really did, _magic_? Like, actual magic? Not just tricks, and stuff?”

“Yes,” he repeated, marvelling slightly at the ease with which the reply came. It had been years since he’d had even had a monosyllabic discussion about this. Even Lomadia didn’t really ask. “Until I... couldn't, anymore.”

He blinked a few times and realised that his vision was clearing. There was a strange sensation starting to spread through him, a bit like a caffeine rush but a lot less forgiving, and he tried sitting up a bit straighter – pleasantly surprised to discover that his personal tapestry of aches had dulled somewhat. The pain was still there, in a way, but it felt shifted aside slightly, as if the connection to it had been numbed under the weird chemical buzz that seemed to be building along his spine.

He was going to crash _hard_ from this. On the bright side, he may well not survive that long.

“We should move,” he said, as the artificial coherence dragged urgency behind it again, and he looked around, taking in the rows of shelves with more focus than before. “...how did we get to here?”

“I’ve got a map,” Zoey replied, but she sounded hesitant. Rythian frowned.

“What?”

“A map.” She raised a hand again, tapping fingers against one of the raw patches on her forehead. “I… I don’t know why. Before you, like, unplugged me? I got a map. In my head.”

Suspicion sparked, and Rythian’s eyes narrowed.

“Why would they give you a map?” he asked sharply, then instantly regretted it as Zoey winced, leaning aside as she shook her head.

“I don’t know. It’s not, marked, or anything. Not like ‘go here, into this totally-not-obvious trap’. I just… know where things are.”

The hairs on the back of Rythian’s neck prickled and he stood up carefully, clutching a little at the counter to stablise himself as a wave of fading dizziness swept down him.

“That doesn’t make sense. Why in the hell would – ?”

“ _I don’t know!_ ” Zoey blurted out, then hunched over violently, catching her head in her hands so hard that her hair bunched into thickened tangles. There was a faint electronic noise and thin slices of brighter green suddenly slid open along her forearms – and Rythian became acutely aware of a rising-pitch whine starting up, as odd green light began to spill out from under her palms. Zoey’s eyes screwed closed, her teeth audibly grinding as she pressed even harder against her hairline, and her shoulders began to shake.

“I don’t know,” she repeated; her voice cracked as she spoke, a rising insistence that sent an answering icy shiver dancing through his own thoughts. “I don’t know what they did, I don’t – if you hadn’t – ”

“Hey,” Rythian crouched back down, with a new breed of panic rising in his chest. He dropped his own hands over hers and tried not to look at the glowing lines, tried not to hear the ominous noise. Her fingers were warm – much warmer than before – and he could feel a shivering running up through the metal-flesh, in time to the sound.

His head was spinning, part from the drugs still working their way through his system, part from the wrong-footed confusion. He _should_ be suspicious of this. He really should.

_She had been singing._

Zoey gave a small, tangled sob, and Rythian curled his fingers a little tighter against hers, ignoring the faint static-shock of the contact.

“I’m not me anymore,” she muttered, rubbing harshly at her scalp, pulling more strands free around the wounded contact points. “I’m not _me_ , Rythian! I don’t even know -”

“ _Zoey_ ,” he said firmly, dipping down as her eyes opened at the name, and sought out her widened gaze. “Look, I’m sorry. We’re going to get out of here. If they were stupid enough to leave you a map, we’re going to use it.”

 _It’s not like I actually have a_ **better** _plan, anyway_.

“We’ll get out,” he repeated, as Zoey slumped forward further, sinking her face into his shoulder and sending an unexpected jolt through him at the closeness of the contact. He swallowed hard, and more words escaped before he could really realize what he was saying. “I promise.”

Zoey nodded. They stayed like that for a while, pressed together and just breathing, as the strange green light faded from her fingers – until Rythian coughed awkwardly, and the urgency of their actual situation slammed back home. Alarms were definitely going off now, and they seemed to be getting louder. The room had a door, which they must have come through, but…

“Where now?” he asked, carefully. Zoey drew a hand across her face, letting out a slow breath, then set her jaw and pointed upwards.

“Vents. I’ll boost you up.”

There was indeed a grid in the roof, protruding from the ceiling a few inches, with the faint whirr of distant fan blades filtering down from beyond it. A tiny part of Rythian’s mind shifted uncomfortably as Zoey held out her cupped hands – but that fell away quickly enough as he stepped into the offered support, and found himself hoisted bodily upwards, her grip adjusting with slightly-alarming ease to tighten firmly around his ankles.

He turned his attention to unhooking the grating; it came away fairly easily, folding down on small hinges, and Zoey boosted him a little further until he could get a decent handhold and pull himself up into the cramped space. It was narrow, and gritty with dust, but he managed to slide along enough to make space.

“I can – ” he started, but cut off as he saw Zoey’s face twist into a calculating expression – heard the faint shift of servos as she dropped into a low crouch – and jerked back a little more as she leapt upwards. She cleared the height with apparent ease and caught onto the lip of the vent, which bent slightly under her fingers. Pushing aside his own shock, Rythian wriggled further backwards as Zoey hauled herself fully up.

“Okay,” she said, shrugging as much as she was able in the narrow space. “So _some_ of it is kinda cool. C’mon, this way.”

Then she flashed a quick smile that – in defiance of all common sense, and _certainly_ of the situation – sent an unexpected, tight coil dancing somewhere beneath his stomach.

_Focus, Rythian. Let’s concentrate on trying not to die, shall we?_

-

-

(* Because of course Yoglabs has [Air Vent Passageways.](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AirVentPassageway?from=Main.AirVentEscape) They do rather seem to use TV tropes as a sort of corporate plan, so I feel this is justified :P)


	5. Rebel girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting into the Labs was easy; getting out is going to be much harder.

The air ducts were narrow, filthy, and _loud_. Several times they had to take a convoluted route around fans, or sets of gratings that even Zoey couldn’t easily dislodge, but the pathway did eventually start sloping upwards. More times than Rythian liked to count, they had to pause, flattened against the metal wall as light and sound and rising chaos filtered up through another grate. It was a bizarre sensation, holding collective breath and gaze as, not all that far below, the commotion they had unleashed seemed to be escalating.

“Where are we, anyway?” Rythian muttered, very quietly, in one of the pauses. Below them, uniformed shapes were running in increasingly-frantic patterns. He could just about see the logo emblazoned neatly on the largest expanse of wall – a stylised flask – but the double-word meant nothing to him.

“The Labs,” Zoey whispered back, with a faint catch in her voice. “It’s… I guess it’s what we got when there wasn’t any kinda magic anymore.”

“What _is_ it?” Rythian hissed again, squinting down at the moving figures. “What do they actually do?”

“Everything,” she replied, and her expression pinched in on itself. “It didn’t used to be… there used to be more, y’know? Companies. Factories. Stuff like that. Not saying they were a _lot_ better, but – well. Yeah. Only so much you can see before – ” She stopped and Rythian raised an eyebrow, but there was nothing more to learn from her closed-down expression. They moved on soon enough, back in silence, until Zoey came up short again.

“We’re outta vent.”

She had warned him – large enough ducts to get through only went so far. But hopefully they would have cleared quite a lot of pursuit.

_Hopefully._

Zoey undid the last grate carefully, peered down, and swung herself out. Rythian followed her, dropping with as much agility as his could manage in his current state. They were in another corridor: wide, with white walls and lines of darker panelling running at shoulder-height down the length of it. Thick coloured lines were etched into the floor, racing in angular patterns alongside each other along and breaking off towards the metal doors that were set at regular intervals along the walls. Rythian glared around, hair prickling on his neck again.

“Come on, before someone sees us – ”

“Oh, we’re being watched,” Zoey replied, airily, and Rythian jerked back towards her so suddenly that even his dulled aches lit up anew. There was a slightly distant expression on her face, as if she was listening to something just out of hearing, and a faint frown nipped into her brow. Rythian blinked. That strange, off-footed feeling was back again, and he hesitated.

“Watched out for? Watched over?”

“...dunno.” Zoey blinked and shook her head as she refocused. “Just… watched. I think. We should – ”

She was in front of him, and with the modified arms possibly she presented a more obvious target. Whatever reason, the first rattling round of gunfire caught Zoey in the shoulder, taking her balance and sending her crashing back into him with a cry. Rythian’s heart skipped a beat as he stumbled under her weight, reached back for blades that weren’t there – but Zoey was already moving, swivelling around to push him behind her, and brought her other arm up, aiming back down the corridor towards the knot of oncoming shapes pouring out of a stairwell.

Her arm _unfolded_. Rythian gawked as her dark-metal fingers swung open, crackling energy between the tips as they rotated into guarding place, around the brilliant emerald glow that burst into life at her flattened palm. Angular patterns lit up along the extended length of her forearm and the whine rose again, abruptly peaking, and a blast of green-white plasma erupted from her sudden weapon, tearing down the corridor in a screaming ball of furious brilliance. It went a little wide of the actual group of figures, but the roof detonated in a storm of collapsing masonry and metal fragments, filling that end of the corridor with choking-thick dust.

Rythian grabbed onto Zoey’s other arm – trying not to focus on where the earlier bullets had torn raw gouges in the flesh, exposing metal underneath – and pulled at her.

“Nice shot – come on!” He tightened his grip as he saw her face; she was very pale, with her mouth stretched wide in an ‘O’ of shock as she stared down at the canon that had swapped out for her hand. “Zoey, we have to move _now!_ ”

And then it was down to running. Alarms chased them down one seemingly-endless corridor after another, room name plates blurring as they shot past, some cryptic, some horribly blunt. Zoey muttered directions each time there was a choice – stairs, a turning – and Rythian pulled her along, trying to keep her moving through the fog of shock that seemed to have descended on her. The cyber-arm was still a gun, trailing back behind them, and she fired a few more times into walls or ceilings, bringing down more obstacles into the path of pursuit, but it _was_ gaining.

Whether or not Zoey could have gone any faster, Rythian certainly couldn’t. Even with the cocktail of god-knows-what buzzing in his veins he could still feel exhaustion folding down – not touching him fully yet, but it was maybe a matter of minutes. They careened around another corner, narrowly missing a group of mainly-testificates who gawked at them in raw surprise. One went for a weapon, probably, but Rythian’s desperate blow caught the man in the gut and he crumpled in their wake.

The corridors were different here – thinner, with a less _finished_ look to them – and he tried to get an idea of where they were. There were numbers printed on the walls at intervals, but their chronology made no sense. Zoey stumbled, yanked out of Rythian's grip as she went down awkwardly and he skidded, doubling back. She was hunched over, face twisted, and there were faint trails of grey-green smoke rising from the opened-up plates of her forearm.

“It hurts – “

“I got you,” Rythian ducked down, pulling her more arm-like arm over his shoulders, feeling his heartbeat hammering frantically away against his ribs. “It can't be far, right?”

Zoey gave a small laugh, but there wasn't a lot of humour in it.

“Up,” she muttered, as they lurched off again, heading for a narrow staircase that angled off this corridor, half-hidden behind some stack of equipment. Everything was _really_ looking rudimentary – they must be in maintenance areas. The stairs seemed needlessly steep under his feet as Rythian hauled them both up, his shoulders popping and creaking alarmingly under Zoey's weight. The pursuing shouting was _very_ close now, with more glimmers of vicious brightness reflecting off the white walls, and every moment he expected to feel plasma slam into his back.

The stairs opened out into a narrow corridor, littered with old crates and bits of cleaning equipment. It wasn't long, but it _was_ a dead end, finishing in a thick metal door that looked very firmly closed. Zoey shook herself free of his support and stumbled over to the wall, propping herself against it as she raised her gun towards the stairs, and gritted her teeth.

“Through there. Roof.”

Rythian slid away from the rising green light again and lurched over to the door. It looked even heavier close-to. There was a keypad set into the wall nearby, a small dark screen at face-height above it – and that was it. No handy clue, no patterns of use on the keys, and Rythian pressed a button experimentally. A small white line flashed up on the screen, blinking, but nothing else happened.

_Shit._

“Passcode?” He craned back, just in time to see Zoey unleash another blast of searing green up into the roof of the stairs – then jerk aside as an answering beam lanced up out the resulting dust cloud, missing her by inches, and gouging a molten line into the wall behind.

“I don’t know!” She pulled herself up, taking what cover there was behind a pile of boxes, and shook her smoking arm violently. “Just – hack it, or something!”

_Hack it?_

He stared at the keypad, and panic wrapped its icy claws around him. He didn’t even know where to _start_. Frantic button-mashing did nothing, and behind him another explosion rocked the floor, accompanied by the screeching howl of rending metal, as more of the roof fell in. Several crimson beams responded this time, blowing out another chunk of internal wall and shredding Zoey’s cover as she dived aside, firing blind again.

Rythian tried to focus. Dusty sweat ran in stinging rivulets down his face, down into the mess of his lips, and his own tiny reflection looked back at him from the screen, where the input line still flashed uncaringly. He was out of ideas. The thought was a thick weight in his mind, pulling down on the rest of him, and he felt the salt-sting in his wounds mirroring across his eyes.

Another sound started up, further down the stairs – something metallic with a new, rising pitch – and Zoey gave a short yelp.

“Anytime, Rythian!” There was breaking urgency in her voice, and Rythian couldn’t turn round, couldn’t see that faint flicker of hope fading from her expression even as he felt it sliding away from his own mind. He’d promised. He’d _promised_ – and he had failed.

“Please.” He hadn’t really meant to speak, but the word escaped anyway, spilling thickly over his ruined lips as he slumped forwards, his forehead pressed against the cold wall, and stared into the little blinking line as it counted down his last moments. Blink. Blink. _Blink_ –

– and then it was a different sort of blink, a flicker in the display, and suddenly he was staring into the close-up image of an eye. Pale, somewhat bloodshot, and traced around with dark circles so deep they might have been etched into the skin, but it was definitely an eye and the image seemed to be staring at him directly.

_Watched over, or just watched? Does it matter now?_

“I promised,” Rythian muttered, not entirely sure why. “I have to get her out. I want – I need – ” he stopped, as his fingers curled together, his teeth grinding around the words. "I'll _find_ a way to burn this whole goddamn place right down to the bedrock.”

Something else blew up terribly close-by, and Zoey stumbled back against the wall beside him, bracing her cannon against her other hand. The scent of burning flesh was acrid in the air, and she groaned.

“Somehow, I’ll _end_ this,” he continued, and the slash of sudden, hot fury that swept across his mind was like a beacon, drawing the scattered fragments of his thoughts back together. He met the screen’s half-gaze with a glare of his own. “I fucking swear it.”

It was a stupid thing to say, impossibly ridiculous in the situation – but when you had run so utterly out of anything else to lose, then why not?

The eye regarded him for another stretched-out moment, then vanished, replaced immediately by the little blinking line. Rythian’s heart sank even further, as even that tiny, mad hope faded.

_Just watched, then._

Blink. Blink. _Bli -_

\- _internal overr1de -_

_\- 1 – 3 -_

_\- err0r -3rror – unauthor1sed –_

_\- 3 – 7 -_

_\- sSSssy7em eRrrr-_

The door slid open, sudden as a shock, even as sparks began to burst beneath the little panel keyboard. Rythian caught onto Zoey’s remaining elbow and dived forward through the thickened metal frame – a moment before the keys blew out in a small storm of melting wires and electronic death-throes, and the heavy door slammed closed behind them again, hairsbreath-close.

Cold, clear air came like a slap to the face and Rythian gasped, only just managing to keep his balance as bright sunlight poured down, incongruously-cheerful against the ongoing fear. They had come out onto a rooftop – or at least, a tier of one, forested in vents and pylons and a hundred other types of miscellaneous building-top furniture. More levels stacked away above them, framed against an even higher snow-dusted peak. As Rythian lurched forward, he realised that the building dropped away sheer at the sides, down to a thin strip of blue water sickeningly far below. The place must be built right into the mountain, stretching its endless white tunnels far into the earth like some clinical fungus.

There was a _click-whine_ and Rythian looked round in time to see Zoey’s still-smoking arm fold back into itself, going from cannon to hand in a strange, fluid reversal – although there was still shaded steam rising from open lines along her forearm, and she grimaced as she flexed it.

“Ow.”

Behind them, a dull pounding had started up on the door, and Rythian could swear one corner of it was already turning red. They didn’t have much time.

“We could… climb, I guess?” he suggested, a little muzzily, as he tried to blink the world back into focus again. The chemical boost was starting to give, and he could feel thin grey fingers twisting up into his other thoughts. No – no he had to stay focused, they _had_ to…

“Nah.” Zoey shook her head, as she rubbed at her temple with her other hand, frowning. “There’s, like, force-walls and nasty stuff. I mean, it’s the back way, right, but they’re not _stupid_.”

Now she had said it, Rythian could just see a faint gleam to the air, just below the edge of the roof. It even _looked_ ominous. He looked up, behind them at the tiered steps of building and the rising peak.

“We… we could – ” Thoughts wouldn’t come, not properly, and he barely jumped as Zoey stepped sharply in front of him. There was another clang, louder than before, from the door.

“You got us out.” She caught onto his shoulders, her fingers scaldingly-hot even through his ragged shirt, and pressed her forehead to his own, staring into his eyes. “You promised, and you did. Now it's my turn. Do you trust _me_ , Rythian?”

He did. Which was very stupid. He’d known her for – what? A few hours? But the blue stare drilled into him like a lance, and he swallowed hard as he nodded. Zoey gave a short laugh of relief and glanced over to where the vicious, glittering edges of the force-barriers were.

“Good. Go-od. Gosh, I hope this works. Hang tight!” She pulled him forwards, wrapping one metal arm so tightly around his chest that his ribs creaked, and any possible chance of protest died on his lips.

Then she started to run. Rythian’s blurring mind only just managed to figure out what she was doing half a heartbeat before she did it – before her enhanced feet slammed into the rooftop for the final time, and launched them into the air. Gravity caught interest very, very quickly, wrenching down on their strange arc as Rythian’s stomach lurched violently and his world began to spin. The field edge was coming up to them, razored and unforgiving and slicing past so close he felt the sizzle of it along his back, and then there was falling and confusion and the blurring finality of impact – and everything went black.

-

He did _not_ need this right now. Zephos picked his way carefully through the still-cooling rubble, rubbing at the little screw of tension that was tightening under his right temple again. And today had been going so _well_ – he had even managed to find a bit of time to show Honeydew one of the more ridiculous pig-themed inventions that had come out of the madder side of R &D, to the dwarf’s obvious delight. It had been… nice. The holodeck simulations often were; whole worlds, clean and open, and for a few hours he could almost forget what waited outside the projecting walls.

But what waited for him had been _this_. Fire suppression droids were still hurtling about everywhere, spraying hot pieces of broken metal more enthusiastically than seemed necessary. About a mile of corridor had been sealed off entirely; feedback from the abused machinery had shorted out some random but apparently quite important cables; and there was now a sodding great hole in the roof.

And the coffee machine was apparently spitting out frogs today, but that was probably coincidental.

Annoyingly-cheerful afternoon sunlight greeted him as he climbed up over the mess of melted security door, and out onto the back roof. There were figures spread out across the open space, picking their way carefully around the chimneys, but Zephos zeroed in on the one he was looking for. Brightmeer never looked exceptionally healthy at the best of times and the clear light now glinting off his bald head just seemed to add to the palor somehow. ‘Looked like someone’d flipped his rock’, as Honeydew put it before.

“So,” Zephos said, with a slight dart of satisfaction at the man's nervous jolt as he swung round, although he did meet his gaze. “Care to try an explanation?”

The professor glanced nervously from side to side, but rallied quickly.

“Malfunction in Experimental Cybernetics. One of the subjects overpowered my assistant; she will be disciplined, of course, for failing to follow proper procedure. I don’t – ”

“And what – exactly – ” Zephos cut in, icily. “Does _procedure_ say about letting your little pet projects go on a rampage through my building?”

Brightmeer coloured. On him it was a faintly greenish shade.

“There were unexpected variables,” he started, but cut off as Zephos’ eyes narrowed further, and he leaned in. Brightmeer was a little shorter than him – most people were – and couldn’t quite avoid hunching away.

“I expect better of you, _Professor_ ,” he said sharply. “If you can’t keep your toys tidy, you won’t be allowed to have them. Do I make myself clear?”

“They won’t get far,” Brightmeer assured. “I’ve sent out drones, but…” he hesitated, and suddenly the split-sided stare had a shrewd edge to it, even under the pearlescent gleam of his half-visor. “Can’t you just… move them? Back here?”

Zephos felt a little muscle start to twitch in his cheek, and fought to keep his face blank as he lowered his voice.

“Did you get me a _name_?”

Brightmeer blinked.

“What?”

“Either of them. A name,” Zephos repeated, and the man looked puzzled.

“...no. Some mage-trash on steroids and the last of that batch we caught going after Site B. I didn’t think – ”

“No. You didn’t.” Zephos stood back, lips twisting in distaste. “I need a name, Brightmeer. If you can’t even give me that, what use are you?”

He left the implied threat hanging in the air and turned away, glaring down at the valley below, where droid shapes were starting to move along the distant river. This… bothered him. Maybe it was just the inopportune timing, but he couldn’t shake the sense that there was more to this than just some lucky bastards slipping the net.

Zephos reached down, flipping his personal comm unit open, and stalked a little further away from the milling figures as he stabbed at the familiar channel.

“And where the hell were _you?_ ” he snapped as Lalna’s focal eye flashed up on the little display. It was a little bloodshot, but that wasn’t particularly unusual.

“They bypassed main security,” the flattened tones came back, sounding distinctly un-invested even by his current standards. “Must have got into the system somehow.”

“You _are_ the system,” Zephos retorted, but got little more than a sort of electronic shrug in response. He flipped the comm closed, a little more viciously than perhaps it needed and turned around, sweeping a glare across the assembled figures. Many of them flinched. Good.

“Oh for Pete’s sake – just find them! _Deal with this_.” He punctuated the order with an emphatic wave of his hand – sharp, and angrily enough that a few still-smoking chunks of masonry within range flickered and snapped out of existence. The headache was really setting in now – one of _those_ , the infuriatingly mortal niggle that seemed to always overcome his attempts to dispel it, even now – and he stomped back towards the wreck of a doorway, muttering under his breath.

He did _not_ need this.

-

Rythian awoke to the sound of singing. The duet tones filtered in slowly, sliding with tuneful smoothness between the awareness starting to condense out of the thick, warm fog of sleep.

It was… nice. Some part of him was aware of the sheer extended litany of aching that awaited him on actual consciousness – and wasn’t keen on it – so it took quite a while before he had drawn together enough drifts of thought to count as being properly awake. When he did it was rather begrudgingly – and then, as connections finally clicked back into place in his refocusing brain, the last few moments of clear recollection slammed home like a hammer, and the warm fuzz vanished abruptly.

“ – _oh god –_ ” Rythain jolted upright, and immediately hunched over again in a spasm as every one of his muscles seemed to violently protest at the movement, awkwardly head-butting his own knees. Breath caught in his chest, harsh and rasping up against his ribs and he gasped, eyes watering, and curled over further, trying to regain control. There was an exclamation, just outside the little cocoon of muscular chaos that he had risen into, and he was dimly aware of hands – _several_ hands – on his shoulders, his arms, easing him back down onto the soft surface beneath.

He kept his eyes shut, as memories whirled and danced nauseatingly across his mind. What was he going to see when he did look up? There were – there were –

Fingers stroking gently across his forehead, and a sudden weight on the bed – it _was_ a bed, he could feel the sheets now; not a board, not a bleached-down table of cybernetic horror – beside him, and he couldn’t manage more than a choke as a dozen different responses got tangled in his throat.

“It’s alright,” The voice was familiar, and he felt a tension he hadn’t quite realised was there release, somewhere at the back of his mind. “It’s just me.”

“...Zoey,” he muttered, hearing the creak and croak of his own voice, then his hand rose almost unbidden – surprised – at the remarkably _dulled_ pain in his lips. His shaking fingertips traced over fine-stitched skin, not whole, but getting there, and he finally let his eyes slide open. Zoey’s tilted face was hanging over him, and she was smiling.

“Hey, good lookin’,” she said, quietly, and traced another quick touch across his forehead, chasing away loose strands of hair. “How’re you feeling?”

“Pretty terrible,” he admitted, then frowned. “...you threw us off a _building_.”

Her grin widened, and the expression did something complicated at the base of Rythian’s spine.

“Still, a plan’s a plan, right?” She shrugged expressively, swinging one hand out to one side and a… _stump_ out to the other. Rythian’s eyes widened, horrified, as he focused on her right arm, which now ended in a blunt, soldered metal cap at mid-bicep.

“ _Jes_ us!”

She followed his gaze and shrugged again as she reached over and tapped her remaining fingers against the metal.

“So, yeah. Turns out? Sticking an overheating prototype plasma cannon straight into a river doesn’t do it a whole lot of good. Still, it’s just an arm, no worries, right? I got some ideas.”

“...I guess?” He couldn’t really think of anything better to say, and instead focused on trying to ease himself further upright. It was slow going – even the blankets seemed heavy, pulling against his skin, and it was only as they slid down to his waist that he realised that he was lacking any _other_ sort of covering. He froze, heat flaring under his cheeks, and Zoey giggled as she turned away.

“You’ve been in and out for, like, a week. Paul helped with the whole – pants – thing.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder.

“Paul?” Rythian followed the gesture, noting as he did so that they were in a small wooden room, simply decorated with bookshelves and carved furniture, and he blinked at another figure leaning on the doorway. The testificate’s severe face furrowed as he met Rythian’s gaze – subjecting him to a very _assessing_ stare – then he nodded once, deeply, and turned away, vanishing back further into the house.

“Paul’s sympathetic – I mean,” Zoey corrected, quickly. “A friend. We jam, y’know?”

She was avoiding his eyes. Rythian settled back, carefully, as a few memories sparked, and he frowned.

_‘Only so much you can see before -’_

“How _did_ they get you? Back there?” he asked, and he saw the stiffen in her shoulders even as she reached up distractedly, brushing a lock of red hair behind her ear. There was silence for a moment, stretching out around them, then Zoey let out a long breath.

“Look, I… I had to do _something_ , y’know? And there were a lot of us, when we started looking for others. I don’t – I mean, it didn’t go so well, right, but that wasn’t everyone. Not by a long shot. And now I’ve got – well, I’ve got _this_ , I guess – ” she reached up, pressing her palm to her forehead again and her eyes gleamed, hard-bright even in the soft light of the small room.

“We can hit back,” she said quietly, but there was steel under the words and no shake to her voice. “Properly. Stop them hurting anyone else, any way we can. I mean – ” she hesitated again, half moving to touch his hand and halted, just above the skin. “We’ve been getting mages out for years, right, on boats and things, and I’m totally sure I could get you away if you want to – ”

“ _Zoey_.” Rythian cut her off and reached up, a little awkwardly, to catch onto her hovering hand. It was a point of stability, as the world seemed to lurch around them, past and present slamming into the reeling future with an iron inevitability. He set his jaw, feeling the scarring mess of his lips pull oddly against each other.

He had rebuilt himself once before already, although not quite as _literally_ as Zoey might be doing. He was going to need new blades, something that worked against this new enemy, and very likely he would need more technologically-minded help with that as well. But now he had seen the face of it, a glimpse of what lay beneath the monster’s white-metal skin, on this side of the broken world.

_Sorry, Lom. But I promised, and I can’t turn my back on this now._

Zoey was watching him, an oddly hopeful expression rising onto her face, and Rythian squeezed her hand.

“I never told you why I came here, did I?” he said, quietly, as he tried to figure out where to even _begin_ with this. Perhaps… right at the start, when the world had gone so very wrong. When everything had ended; and everything _else_ began. He took a slow breath, and met her gaze.

“I suppose… it started on the day that magic died.”

\---


End file.
